Thank You! (for Nissa2's design)

THEMAGICkMAN

The Nissa2 design is amazing!
I mean sure, it uses energy, which kinds sucks, but it's designed in a way where you don't HAVE to use energy in your deck to use N2's abilities, it certainly makes her stronger, but it isn't required to use her abilities well (unlike Chandra2). I am absolutely loving the design of this planeswalker and would like to see this style continue for set-specific planeswalkers going forward.

(But please, keep it to 1 set-specific planeswalker per block.)

Yay! N2 didn't suck!!! Thank you Devs!

Editing the subject line to better reflect the content of this thread. After the discussion ends, it'll be moved from General Discussion to Suggestions/Feedback // Alve

THEMAGICkMAN

Also, the mana is well designed as well - forgot to put this in the OP.

It is still very, very good, but it doesn't make Greens ramp absolutely insane, which is something I was afraid of happening with N2. Obviously the Devs took this into account and kept it in mind, which I'm grateful for. Please keep the great design up!

blacklotus

I have to agree. She's very viable as a top tier pw.

Her Ult can end a game easily. And green has cheap trample spells to make sure that huge damage potential is not wasted on a 1/1 blocker. U only need 1 clear shot most of the time.

Her mana gains are also top tier. well distributed at +4/+3/+2 on g/w/r and +0 on b/u.

Ohboy

She's looks pretty sick. Don't know why there was a separate thread talking about how bad she is.

Looking at a potential maximum of 552 dmg spike in a single turn. With green's ramp, you might not even see it coming.

Definitely potential top tier.

Mainloop25

Totally didn't agree with the complaints. I think it's only because Eenergize puts a bad taste in people's mouths. I'm most excited about her mana gains, actually.

speakupaskanswer

Can anyone provide us with a screenshot or a link?

Ohboy

speakupaskanswer wrote:

Can anyone provide us with a screenshot or a link?

https://d3publisherofamerica.zendesk.co ... /Nissa.PNG

speakupaskanswer

Her mana gain is really powerful as is her first ability, but I still don't get why make THREE PWs with Energize. They follow the old rule: "If something doesn't work, do more of it."

THEMAGICkMAN

Yeah I get that she uses energy and energy = bad.
But she uses it smartly, it's honestly inventive and seems fun -- if I weren't a student and unable to spend money on phone games I would 100% buy N2.
Well done Devs, this is a very good step in the right direction, I love a well designed card/planeswalker, I plan to make a post with some of my designs for Aether Revolt cards sometime soon, it's something I truly love and it pleased me so much seeing how well you made N2 and how much though went into it, nice job JC! (Or whoever else designs the cards/planeswalkers)

speakupaskanswer

Energy is not bad and I like a good design too (which Chandra2 isn't, I think), I really enjoy Dovin. But why should we invest in something that will become less to not relevant in the next block? That is the real problem. Paper MtG always never does that with their PWs.

Steeme

Actually I'm quite impressed with her design. I would definitely add her to the stable.

However, and this is no fault of N2, energize is horrendous in practice. Turns the match into a slideshow, and it's very difficult to keep track of what's going on.

I'm on the fence.

Ohboy

speakupaskanswer wrote:

Her mana gain is really powerful as is her first ability, but I still don't get why make THREE PWs with Energize. They follow the old rule: "If something doesn't work, do more of it."

'Tis a lesson you should heed:
Try, try, try again.
If at first you don't succeed,
Try, try, try again.

THEMAGICkMAN

Yeah I think we can all agree the problem is energy, not N2. And if the lag is fixed and there are some decent non-exclusive energize cards in Aether Revolt then I think she's amazing. Of course a set specific planeswalker is going to get a below average response, and 3 in one block is overkill, I really hope the devs will read this (we wish ) so they dont make the same mistake again...

I swear if Ajani in Aether Revolt uses energy...

DaisukeK

kudos devs, and all the forum-goers for persistent voicing of complaints
This is what feedback is, isn't it?

Still waiting for C2 redesign!

morgue427

i was worried about the spike in energy use but going against the ai all the time i think it will be manageable, green does have a good list of decent creatures that can use it effectively and i was worried the last one was a support that got me thinking time for a devoid deck but just one time use that the ai will almost never get i can work with that. over all seems well designed but still waiting on Rai to come back on salei can work without her energize abilities better

Gotcha617

Super excited to use this one...it generates good energy and makes good use of the energy. Green has viable cards that continue to produce energy as they are used. problem with Chandra 2 is the lack of generating energize with red after it enters the field

Hibernum_JC

I'm glad you folks are realizing her potential. I was actually worried her ultimate might be a bit too strong (in PvP, it can one-shot people pretty strongly but it does require setup) but after testing it seems to make sense.

And now that Dovin Baan, C2 and N2 are out, I can share a bit the philosophy behind their design, the energy/overload relationship and their design themes.

These 3 Planeswalkers were designed to be a rock/paper/scissors type of deal, with Energy as the central mechanic. Basically, this is what it's meant to look like:

Dovin Baan: Energy generation/Overload (the most straightforward one)
Chandra: Energy removal/destruction
Nissa: Energy scaling

With this, the goal is as such: Dovin Baan beats Chandra who beats Nissa who beats Dovin Baan.

Dovin Baan is strong against Chandra because while she can remove energy efficiently, he is self-sufficient and will always put out more than needs to survive, but is weak against Nissa because since she scales with Energy, she will easily dispatch him as he generates a lot of it.

Chandra is strong against Nissa because she actively works to REMOVE the energy that Nissa works to put on the board. All 3 of her abilities are designed around removing Energy (although the first one will also put some out to ensure that she can fuel herself). Building a low-cost deck with her (and with red that's not necessarily too hard) lets you effectively remove Energy, keeping Nissa in check. She is weaker to Dovin Baan since he doesn't scale with energy, he just needs a bit to be able to survive and use his stronger abilities.

Nissa is strong against Dovin Baan because she scales ridiculously strongly with Energy, making her a force to be reckoned with. With Dovin Baan's huge energy generation potential, all Nissa needs to do is build up her third, get 3 creatures on the board and she wins. However, against Chandra, it's a much more uphill battle, as Chandra will actively remove the Energy Nissa feeds off of, severely weakening her.

That's the design *intent* behind these three Planeswalkers. The execution might be a bit off (especially in Chandra's case) but that's the idea.

Alve

Hibernum_JC wrote:

I'm glad you folks are realizing her potential. I was actually worried her ultimate might be a bit too strong (in PvP, it can one-shot people pretty strongly but it does require setup) but after testing it seems to make sense.

And now that Dovin Baan, C2 and N2 are out, I can share a bit the philosophy behind their design, the energy/overload relationship and their design themes.

These 3 Planeswalkers were designed to be a rock/paper/scissors type of deal, with Energy as the central mechanic. Basically, this is what it's meant to look like:

Dovin Baan: Energy generation/Overload (the most straightforward one)
Chandra: Energy removal/destruction
Nissa: Energy scaling

With this, the goal is as such: Dovin Baan beats Chandra who beats Nissa who beats Dovin Baan.

Dovin Baan is strong against Chandra because while she can remove energy efficiently, he is self-sufficient and will always put out more than needs to survive, but is weak against Nissa because since she scales with Energy, she will easily dispatch him as he generates a lot of it.

Chandra is strong against Nissa because she actively works to REMOVE the energy that Nissa works to put on the board. All 3 of her abilities are designed around removing Energy (although the first one will also put some out to ensure that she can fuel herself). Building a low-cost deck with her (and with red that's not necessarily too hard) lets you effectively remove Energy, keeping Nissa in check. She is weaker to Dovin Baan since he doesn't scale with energy, he just needs a bit to be able to survive and use his stronger abilities.

Nissa is strong against Dovin Baan because she scales ridiculously strongly with Energy, making her a force to be reckoned with. With Dovin Baan's huge energy generation potential, all Nissa needs to do is build up her third, get 3 creatures on the board and she wins. However, against Chandra, it's a much more uphill battle, as Chandra will actively remove the Energy Nissa feeds off of, severely weakening her.

That's the design *intent* behind these three Planeswalkers. The execution might be a bit off (especially in Chandra's case) but that's the idea.

I'd say that the biggest problem with your scenario in Chandra's case is that we're rarely matched with KLD-themed decks in pvp. Not only some players tend to actively avoid this set, because simply OP SOI/EMN cards make intricate KLD mechanics seem quite underwhelming, you're matched against every possible deck from a player's roster and let's face it, some of those decks haven't been touched since BFZ. They won't generate Energy, I'm sure. So you spend a long time saving loyalty for Chandra's ultimate and in practice it's good for two or three shots at best.

If in events decks were locked once you picked a pw (preventing sideboarding and changing your decks to something outright mean when you're not playing them) and you were matched only against decks that actually entered the event, Energy would be much more useful, at least in some events (like IF). You wouldn't be depending only on yourself to generate Energy, which is what makes Chandra's skills pretty useless or underwhelming at best in most battles, and sabotages many KLD cards.

It'd be even more fun if you introduced the above solution with an equivalent of a Standard format. If I couldn't Deploy Olivia, Decimator and Emrakul (or whatever combination of OP cards I pick), I'd probably spend more time playing around with KLD mechanics in real pvp. We could have set-specific events for every set, plus an all-out battle like NoP. This way we'd get to experiment with both old a new mechanics. Furthermore, it'd benefit old and new players alike and alleviate some concerns of the current reward system or selling cards like Olivia. Old and no longer dedicated players would be able to stay partially competitive with their BFZ decks, new players wouldn't have to face decks full of SOI mythics/cards from coalition rewards/cards collected because someone has been playing for a year longer all the time and everything would be more fun for everyone (IMHO).

James13

I like the theory.

In practice, however, there's a lot more planeswalkers so you get matched against non-energize decks way too often for C2.

Perhaps if her abilities optionally removed energy but didn't require the removal of energy to work?

Hibernum_JC

Alve wrote:

Hibernum_JC wrote:

I'm glad you folks are realizing her potential. I was actually worried her ultimate might be a bit too strong (in PvP, it can one-shot people pretty strongly but it does require setup) but after testing it seems to make sense.

And now that Dovin Baan, C2 and N2 are out, I can share a bit the philosophy behind their design, the energy/overload relationship and their design themes.

These 3 Planeswalkers were designed to be a rock/paper/scissors type of deal, with Energy as the central mechanic. Basically, this is what it's meant to look like:

Dovin Baan: Energy generation/Overload (the most straightforward one)
Chandra: Energy removal/destruction
Nissa: Energy scaling

With this, the goal is as such: Dovin Baan beats Chandra who beats Nissa who beats Dovin Baan.

Dovin Baan is strong against Chandra because while she can remove energy efficiently, he is self-sufficient and will always put out more than needs to survive, but is weak against Nissa because since she scales with Energy, she will easily dispatch him as he generates a lot of it.

Chandra is strong against Nissa because she actively works to REMOVE the energy that Nissa works to put on the board. All 3 of her abilities are designed around removing Energy (although the first one will also put some out to ensure that she can fuel herself). Building a low-cost deck with her (and with red that's not necessarily too hard) lets you effectively remove Energy, keeping Nissa in check. She is weaker to Dovin Baan since he doesn't scale with energy, he just needs a bit to be able to survive and use his stronger abilities.

Nissa is strong against Dovin Baan because she scales ridiculously strongly with Energy, making her a force to be reckoned with. With Dovin Baan's huge energy generation potential, all Nissa needs to do is build up her third, get 3 creatures on the board and she wins. However, against Chandra, it's a much more uphill battle, as Chandra will actively remove the Energy Nissa feeds off of, severely weakening her.

That's the design *intent* behind these three Planeswalkers. The execution might be a bit off (especially in Chandra's case) but that's the idea.

I'd say that the biggest problem with your scenario in Chandra's case is that we're rarely matched with KLD-themed decks in pvp. Not only some players tend to actively avoid this set, because simply OP SOI/EMN cards make intricate KLD mechanics seem quite underwhelming, you're matched against every possible deck from a player's roster and let's face it, some of those decks haven't been touched since BFZ. They won't generate Energy, I'm sure. So you spend a long time saving loyalty for Chandra's ultimate and in practice it's good for two or three shots at best.

If in events decks were locked once you picked a pw (preventing sideboarding and changing your decks to something outright mean when you're not playing them) and you were matched only against decks that actually entered the event, Energy would be much more useful, at least in some events (like IF). You wouldn't be depending only on yourself to generate Energy, which is what makes Chandra's skills pretty useless or underwhelming at best in most battles, and sabotages many KLD cards.

It'd be even more fun if you introduced the above solution with an equivalent of a Standard format. If I couldn't Deploy Olivia, Decimator and Emrakul (or whatever combination of OP cards I pick), I'd probably spend more time playing around with KLD mechanics in real pvp. We could have set-specific events for every set, plus an all-out battle like NoP. This way we'd get to experiment with both old a new mechanics. Furthermore, it'd benefit old and new players alike and alleviate some concerns of the current reward system or selling cards like Olivia. Old and no longer dedicated players would be able to stay partially competitive with their BFZ decks, new players wouldn't have to face decks full of SOI mythics/cards from coalition rewards/cards collected because someone has been playing for a year longer all the time and everything would be more fun for everyone (IMHO).

This is an actual issue (matchmaking/Standard format) we're looking to resolve at some point in time (I can't give specifics because I really don't have any).

However, what I can say is that there are upcoming events where C2 should be able to shine a lot more, especially on the PvE side of things, where there are enemies that Energize quite a bit, use Energy-generating cards and typically are a lot better.

The idea also was we were hoping players would actually enjoy the Kaladesh set, but the response has been pretty cold so far, sadly, so I think the plans didn't fully pan out. There is a pretty large backlash against Energy I personally was not expecting - feedback on Ingest/Process/Devoid in BFZ was that players liked the idea, but there wasn't enough cards that took advantage of the mechanic to be of any use, so we made sure there was plenty of Energy generators and Overload cards in Kaladesh to remedy this problem. What ended up happening is sort of the opposite - there's a lot of these cards, but players don't like them for multiple reasons. This is a big learning experience for me as I design the future sets.

Ohboy

Hibernum_JC wrote:

I'm glad you folks are realizing her potential. I was actually worried her ultimate might be a bit too strong (in PvP, it can one-shot people pretty strongly but it does require setup) but after testing it seems to make sense.

And now that Dovin Baan, C2 and N2 are out, I can share a bit the philosophy behind their design, the energy/overload relationship and their design themes.

These 3 Planeswalkers were designed to be a rock/paper/scissors type of deal, with Energy as the central mechanic. Basically, this is what it's meant to look like:

Dovin Baan: Energy generation/Overload (the most straightforward one)
Chandra: Energy removal/destruction
Nissa: Energy scaling

With this, the goal is as such: Dovin Baan beats Chandra who beats Nissa who beats Dovin Baan.

Dovin Baan is strong against Chandra because while she can remove energy efficiently, he is self-sufficient and will always put out more than needs to survive, but is weak against Nissa because since she scales with Energy, she will easily dispatch him as he generates a lot of it.

Chandra is strong against Nissa because she actively works to REMOVE the energy that Nissa works to put on the board. All 3 of her abilities are designed around removing Energy (although the first one will also put some out to ensure that she can fuel herself). Building a low-cost deck with her (and with red that's not necessarily too hard) lets you effectively remove Energy, keeping Nissa in check. She is weaker to Dovin Baan since he doesn't scale with energy, he just needs a bit to be able to survive and use his stronger abilities.

Nissa is strong against Dovin Baan because she scales ridiculously strongly with Energy, making her a force to be reckoned with. With Dovin Baan's huge energy generation potential, all Nissa needs to do is build up her third, get 3 creatures on the board and she wins. However, against Chandra, it's a much more uphill battle, as Chandra will actively remove the Energy Nissa feeds off of, severely weakening her.

That's the design *intent* behind these three Planeswalkers. The execution might be a bit off (especially in Chandra's case) but that's the idea.

You mention you did pvp tests that required setups. Does that mean you actually have an engine to do actual pvp? Are we going to see it?

btw, if energy destruction is what you're going for with chandra, may I suggest skills 2 and 3 read "remove all energised gems from the board" instead of "remove x gems from the board"