Please nerf Baral

AngelForge

Steeme wrote:

Astralwind wrote:

I have lost to Olivia but never Baral. I think if Baral is nerfed, the same should apply to Olivia.

It's not about what you win or lose against, it's whether or not the AI will get into some loop that, programmatically, can last "forever" (not to be taken literally). They had to fix Season's Past for that reason, they fixed the Aether Heart for the same reason. Baral is frighteningly close, depending on the perfect deck list with Saheeli. This is what needs to be stopped in the short term.

Long term card balance changes? Sure, I agree there are a subset of cards in this game that are undeniably stronger than the rest of the cards. But I honestly get tired of hearing about Olivia this, Olivia that because she is just a single card.

Don't you remember what happened to Kiora? People whined about this, whined about that, la, la, la until the Devs took the axe to her and brutally slaughtered her into complete uselessness. This of course caused an uproar (and rightly so) which forced the Devs to revert all changes except to her first ability.

What kind of gruesome death are you calling for Olivia? You realize that once you strip her powers, she'll just become shelved, right? I mean, suppose you apply her powers to other vampires only.. well, you will only see her in SOI events. Once she's buried, then what? Shift focus to the next card that beats you?

Kioras nerf was well deserved, she's still one of the best planeswalker in this game, but a little more in line with the others.
And that what nerfing is actually about, I think. Put some overpowered cards back into the line with others.
And, Olivia is meant all the time for a good reason. Since I got her, the power of my decks increased significantly.
So, when one card changes so much, it's obvious that it is too strong in relation with the others.

So, Kiora deserved it. Olivia deserves it, and Baral will probably deserve it too. But for all I care, they can start with all the cards from SOI + addon.

andrewvanmarle

buscemi wrote:

andrewvanmarle wrote:

Anyone who suggests that you can consistently play turn one kills better prove it (youtube)
...
So prove it, when you talking about a first turn kill or just be quiet....

This I'm completely on board with. I don't claim to be the best deckbuilder in the world, but I've been testing Baral a fair bit over the last couple days and I've only managed a turn 1 kill once.

andrewvanmarle wrote:

Even if you play baral on turn 1,you wont have achieved anything without a kill-condition like mettalurgic summoning etc.

You are joking here, tho, right? Playing Baral turn 1 is not a given, as you'll need a cascade for 8 mana, as well as drawing him on your first 3 cards, but if you achieve that he can easily generate value far in advance of anything that we've seen a deck produce on turn 1 before... Not Forgotten and Strength of Arms create creatures, Haunted Cloak will let them (and him) attack, and Ghostly Wings or Shard of Broken Glass will permanently pump them up. Devour in Flames will immediately start shooting your opponent (with Scatter to the Winds handily taking away any mana he might gain from it). Pump spells like Built to Smash or Ethereal Guidance will immediately deal damage if you've played a Cloak, or, just be cycled away for no loss otherwise.

And the loop doesn't necessarily stop whenever a the first non-spell card is drawn, because Stratus Walk, Artificer's Epiphany, and Coastal Discovery will all draw multiple cards with Baral in play.

andrewvanmarle wrote:

And those cards will clog up you hand when baral starts playing spells.

This, honestly, is the most egregious misrepresentation of what a Baral deck can do. When you say that these cards 'clog up your hand', what you mean is this: that at the end any turn when the Baral player has started to combo, they have, in their hand, both Baral, AND a primary win condition, possibly in multiple copies, ready to commence comboing again on the next turn, regardless of what their opponent has managed to disrupt.

andrewvanmarle wrote:

A one turn kill is easy to set up with other combos (one turn, not turn one) too.

Not by turn 3.

Yeah I forgot not forgotten, you are right about that. and yes that is quite a bit of value.

By clogging up your hand I mean that every non spell takes up a slot in your hand untill your hand is full. the next turn you will NOT draw a card sine your hand is full (no you can't exile) so you lose a turn essentially where you may play a creature of support, but most likely wont be able to use baral's special gift. So there is no combo-ing the next turn.

I have yet to see even a one turn kill by turn 3 to be honest, and in turn 4 I can allready do that with nissa 2 and kiora.


My point is not that Baral is strong, olivia strong. nor that that he wont affect the meta, he will. But i don't'think he needs to be nerfed.

What people do need to do is take Baral into account when playing against a blue anything and play the appropriate counter cards. And no, not just kill spells, think of kambal, auth. of the consulate, sram etc

ridfrenzy

I have been using him with Kiora and Dynavolt and Gonti's. He is a crazy card and while fun at first it isn't particularly fun anymore. He has been getting me the 7 turn objective on 3.1 though and my record for that fight so far is a 4 turn kill, being able to do this at all sort of suggests he is a bit broke to me. 400+ HP in a turn is pretty obscene if you ask me.

AettThorn

A suggestion of mine for Baral from another thread:

"What about something like this:

When Baral enters the battlefield, and at the beginning of each of your turns, each spell in your hand gains 3 mana. At the beginning of any turn, if a spell was cast last turn, draw the next spell in your deck into your hand.


Would keep him pretty mythic quality, but wouldn't allow for endless spellcasting."

andrewvanmarle

ridfrenzy wrote:

I have been using him with Kiora and Dynavolt and Gonti's. He is a crazy card and while fun at first it isn't particularly fun anymore. He has been getting me the 7 turn objective on 3.1 though and my record for that fight so far is a 4 turn kill, being able to do this at all sort of suggests he is a bit broke to me. 400+ HP in a turn is pretty obscene if you ask me.

I can do that with a kiora waterveil loop, no need for baral. And to be honest, you just added a severely broken card combo : dynavolt/heart can you do it without? (the heart is gonna be nerfed this week of next)

madwren

AettThorn wrote:

A suggestion of mine for Baral from another thread:

"What about something like this:

When Baral enters the battlefield, and at the beginning of each of your turns, each spell in your hand gains 3 mana. At the beginning of any turn, if a spell was cast last turn, draw the next spell in your deck into your hand.


Would keep him pretty mythic quality, but wouldn't allow for endless spellcasting."

Thumbs up. This is similar to my suggestion. I think just changing the mana gain to the start of the turn instead of on every spell drawn would be the simplest change that retains most of his functionality.

Abbot_Nalaar

If they nerf they should refund the people who purchased him. The reason people bought in was because they knew he was powerful. I do not know the legal recourse of the purchasers if any but they would lose alot of remaining players at the least. They need to swallow this and the players need to metagame baral.

ridfrenzy

andrewvanmarle wrote:

ridfrenzy wrote:

I have been using him with Kiora and Dynavolt and Gonti's. He is a crazy card and while fun at first it isn't particularly fun anymore. He has been getting me the 7 turn objective on 3.1 though and my record for that fight so far is a 4 turn kill, being able to do this at all sort of suggests he is a bit broke to me. 400+ HP in a turn is pretty obscene if you ask me.

I can do that with a kiora waterveil loop, no need for baral. And to be honest, you just added a severely broken card combo : dynavolt/heart can you do it without? (the heart is gonna be nerfed this week of next)

Yeah but how easy is that loop to set up?

It is way harder than cast baral and draw till you draw your combo cards and probably cast them as well. Heart Nerf won't effect this deck I usually have 20+ shields on my heart and don't need the extra swaps, they are there to cope with when I draw too many Barals/supports.

Also how many mythics in your Kiora because when I can do the same with 2-3 mythics it still says your combo is more balanced (if you can call that deck balanced?)

I can get 2-3 turn kills pretty regularly on normal player decks also, can you do the same?

Kami

Just nerf him in that he draws a non spell card instead of the next card. He's still a awesome power like that but you're done with this **** I have to face now.
Just faced 4 baral decks in **** and it's boring like hell.
And it's not that hard to make a kiora deck that will run until you are dead when you play baral.

buscemi

Kami wrote:

Just faced 4 baral decks in **** and it's boring like hell.

He's just brutal in **** isn't he? The power that I paid for is going to get me a perfect in that node, I bet.

Unfortunately, I can't always pay his entire casting cost on turn 1, and must sometimes divide it over the first two turns of the game. I call this 'splitting the 8'.

wereotter

No longer a point to this call to nerf him. Masterpieces were posted, and there's a support coming that will completely eliminate the power Baral enjoys now by making all cards in your opponent's hand cost 5 more. Problem solved. I'll enjoy doing what he does now as I'll likely get sick of him by the time this card is released.

span_argoman

wereotter wrote:

No longer a point to this call to nerf him. Masterpieces were posted, and there's a support coming that will completely eliminate the power Baral enjoys now by making all cards in your opponent's hand cost 5 more. Problem solved. I'll enjoy doing what he does now as I'll likely get sick of him by the time this card is released.

So you're saying we have to somehow obtain this particular Masterpiece card and slot it into every match against a Blue opponent because we cannot afford not to have it if the opponent has Baral?

And we then have to draw into it and summon it before the opponent summons Baral, making it a matter of luck of the draw. And this is considered "problem solved"?

In any case the real reason there's no point to calling for a nerf to Baral is because he just went on sale for a fine sum and the threat of refunds will ensure that nothing is done to Baral in the short term.

wereotter

span_argoman wrote:

wereotter wrote:

No longer a point to this call to nerf him. Masterpieces were posted, and there's a support coming that will completely eliminate the power Baral enjoys now by making all cards in your opponent's hand cost 5 more. Problem solved. I'll enjoy doing what he does now as I'll likely get sick of him by the time this card is released.

So you're saying we have to somehow obtain this particular Masterpiece card and slot it into every match against a Blue opponent because we cannot afford not to have it if the opponent has Baral?

And we then have to draw into it and summon it before the opponent summons Baral, making it a matter of luck of the draw. And this is considered "problem solved"?

In any case the real reason there's no point to calling for a nerf to Baral is because he just went on sale for a fine sum and the threat of refunds will ensure that nothing is done to Baral in the short term.

Only as much as there's a point to also calling to nerf Deploy, Olivia, battle piggy, Ulrich, boomship, and every other game breaking card. But yes. Considering every green deck has to run scour from existence in case of Olivia, then if you're afraid of Baral take appropriate defensive measures, or don't single out just this card.

Also as it wasn't represented in the message quoted, I've advocated for making all the cards more closely resemble their paper counterparts. Olivia shouldn't be giving flying or lifelink to creatures and shouldn't be buffing herself. Battle piggy's effects should only last until the end of turn. Deploy should only fetch up to two creatures from your next seven cards. Wizards has a lot of experience keeping cards balanced. Puzzle Quest should follow them more closely to avoid power creep and game breaking cards. If any nerf to Baral, just don't have him draw a card when you cast a spell, and have him draw you a card when an opponent makes you discard, and he would be in line with his paper counterpart, and not as broken as he is now.

span_argoman

wereotter wrote:

Only as much as there's a point to also calling to nerf Deploy, Olivia, battle piggy, Ulrich, boomship, and every other game breaking card. But yes. Considering every green deck has to run scour from existence in case of Olivia, then if you're afraid of Baral take appropriate defensive measures, or don't single out just this card.

Also as it wasn't represented in the message quoted, I've advocated for making all the cards more closely resemble their paper counterparts. Olivia shouldn't be giving flying or lifelink to creatures and shouldn't be buffing herself. Battle piggy's effects should only last until the end of turn. Deploy should only fetch up to two creatures from your next seven cards. Wizards has a lot of experience keeping cards balanced. Puzzle Quest should follow them more closely to avoid power creep and game breaking cards. If any nerf to Baral, just don't have him draw a card when you cast a spell, and have him draw you a card when an opponent makes you discard, and he would be in line with his paper counterpart, and not as broken as he is now.

There are multiple creature removal cards to deal with Olivia. Over 10 of them spread over the various colours. These cards also have a use against your average deck as most decks nowadays have creatures which are worth spending a card and the associated mana cost to remove.

For Baral we're talking one card as a counter. And it's a Masterpiece to boot. That's on the levels of gating Dynavolt Tower as an event exclusive Mythic and wondering why most people have issues with Energize/Overload.

That's before counting the fact that this new support is primarily useful against Baral and Black decks with tons of removal. And Harness the Storm decks if you ever encounter those.

For the record, I have also pushed for other OP cards like Olivia and Deploy the Gatewatch to be nerfed. But it just seems like it isn't going to be the intended direction.

Boomship on the other hand can only be argued to be OP because of Saheeli's ability. In itself it is nothing special for a mythic creature. Tyrant of Valakut has a better version of the same ability on a cheaper body. There are plenty of cards with better power-to-mana ratio.

Ulrich and Decimator definitely warrant another look at from the developers, but once again with the direction the game is heading, soon enough they're going to look ordinary.

wereotter

Comparing Olivia is equally valid considering just thus morning I faced against a deck where a Nahiri got a turn 1 Olivia buffed it turn 2 and then cast two Lone Riders. That ended up being 26 flying lifelink damage on turn 2. Yes there's creature removal, but that also means that I had to have it in hand and charged up on turn 1 to deal with it. I did not and died by turn 4 losing the points from the node entirely due to Olivia. So yes. She's just as OP as Baral, else I could just throw back your "Baral dies to removal" argument.

span_argoman

wereotter wrote:

Comparing Olivia is equally valid considering just thus morning I faced against a deck where a Nahiri got a turn 1 Olivia buffed it turn 2 and then cast two Lone Riders. That ended up being 26 flying lifelink damage on turn 2. Yes there's creature removal, but that also means that I had to have it in hand and charged up on turn 1 to deal with it. I did not and died by turn 4 losing the points from the node entirely due to Olivia. So yes. She's just as OP as Baral, else I could just throw back your "Baral dies to removal" argument.

You might have missed the second part of my post where I said that I have called for Olivia to be nerfed before and still think she should be.

andrewvanmarle

For Baral we're talking one card as a counter. And it's a Masterpiece to boot. /quote]

Well, use authority of the consulate, disable, minds dilation, kambal etc just a few cards that severely hurt a baral deck

And yes when you go up against a certain color deck, you take precautions, that is playing smart.

buscemi

andrewvanmarle wrote:

For Baral we're talking one card as a counter. And it's a Masterpiece to boot. /quote]

Well, use authority of the consulate, disable, minds dilation, kambal etc just a few cards that severely hurt a baral deck

And yes when you go up against a certain color deck, you take precautions, that is playing smart.

If you use defensive cards in a QB deck, you aren't going to rank very highly in QB.

You're better off just quitting the game as soon as you see Baral, or indeed any really troubling card, so you can start a new game more quickly. This, I'm sure, was the way the devs intended QB to be played; avoid challenge at all costs, make sure you own some of the limited number of rare and mythic aggressive beatdown cards, and RSI your way to the top!

DuskPaladin

I'm usually never an advocate of nerfing cards, I like cool and powerful effects. Unfortunately, I can't agree with Baral.

His style of play is really repetitive.

Yes, it must have been fun the first 10 games or so seeing your well-oiled engine playing itself alone, casting endless streams of cards. But it gets old and tedious fast. You know who doesn't get bored though? The AI.


It's the perfect troll deck for the AI.

The AI prioritizes casting creatures first, placing Baral on top of its hand. When he comes into play, he'll cast all your draw spells, drawing and casting every more spells, so you'll always get your combo pieces. The only way for your loop to end is when you'll have drawn all your non-cheap spells (which usually means an hand full of Barals).
The loop also takes forever, but the computer doesn't care that you just want to play fast games nor that it's eating your battery life away. Don't forget that it's an all draw spell decks, so you'll draw Baral soon enough. There's a reason that in paper magic they limited all the cheap card draw/selection spells.


It dies to removal is a terrible argument here.

As soon as you cast Baral, your deck will loop, and since it's a cheap draw spells deck, you'll get your haste granting spells after Baral gots big from other power-boosting spells. Its one-shotting potential is really high. and even if you managed to not get one shotted, the very same scenario will happen the next 1-2 turns. Even if you killed him, the damage will already be done and another Baral will be waiting in his hand to repeat the combo until you die.


Bad matchmaking rears its ugly head yet again.

Other people mentioned it before, Baral is unlike things like Ob Nixilis or Deploy, both are powerful tools, in the hand in the player, but NOT for the computer. It's fun in our hands, but would be devastating in the computer's hands if it was the case. Baral is the opposite, he's much better for the opponent. The problem is exacerbated when we know that we're still always facing a really small amount of opponents. At least one such opponent decided to run Baral is all his blue decks. (decks he's most likely not playing with ever like Jace1 or Tezz) Meanwhile, you're still playing with your **** decks for the events, limiting yourself to try to get all the secondary objectives, giving your opponent all the time in the world to set up his combo. I can assure you that more and more people will be complaining when they'll be on the receiving end of it, in ALL the Mastery Tiers. (Baral is really easy to assemble, you only need him and cheap draw spells, all commons and uncommons) Facing him from time to time already sucks, but bearable, but facing him in 50-80% of your matches is beyond frustrating.


Loop decks are bad for the game.

Dear Devs, you've shown in the past that looping engines need to be nerfed like Harness the Storm, Seasons Past, Gonti's Aether Heart, Baral absolutely falls into that category. Please nerf him. Yes, many people will complain and threaten to ask for a refund, but for the health of the game, it'll still be a preferable outcome to what the state of the game will be. Players don't like to feel cheated, facing Baral will exactly be that. Yes they'll win many games thanks to Baral (until they get bored to death), but they'll remember every single loss vs Baral.

If a car is defective, it's the supplier's job to fix it, even if it means to call them all back, unless the supplier prefers to see many more reports of crashes, and lawsuits.

madwren

wereotter wrote:

Comparing Olivia is equally valid considering just thus morning I faced against.....

She isn't a logical comparison, though. She doesn't create near-infinite loops. The complaint with Baral isn't that he's powerful. There are lots of powerful cards. It's that it creates uninterruptable cycles of MTGPQ solitaire. This is the same complaint leveled against Seasons Past and Harness the Storm and Gonti's Aether Heart--all of which are also not directly comparable to Olivia.

Thinking Olivia is OP is perfectly valid and acceptable, but they're two vastly different scenarios.