Please nerf Baral

madwren

bken1234 wrote:

Has the game really come to this? First there was this thread and now this one. Is the #1 coalition in the universe going to shout "NERF NERF NERF" every time they lose because you can't be bothered to take a step back, regroup and think intelligently about how to overcome changes?.

This is an incredibly reductive and disappointing take.

I own Baral, and am using him. I will do so until he's changed. Many of the people posting in this thread are able to take a larger view of the game, and argue against our own personal interests in order to promote a healthy playing environment. Fixing Baral does not benefit me in the least. Likewise, fixing Olivia didn't benefit me when I had been taking advantage of her not discarding madness cards. Fixing Seasons Past didn't benefit me when I had an infinite loop deck in every green node, and fixing Harness didn't benefit me when my previously awesome cycles became so much more prone to interruption and fizzling out.

My argument is that solitaire loops are a negative player experience that are bad for the game. While lower tier players in particular do not have the countermeasures necessary to combat them, there is nothing that is healthy or enjoyable about anyone, in ANY tier, watching the AI cycle cards for 15 minutes. This was true with SP, true with Heart, true with early Harness, and true with Baral. Disallowing player agency and encouraging them to simply set the phone down and go do something else is not a positive result. Causing people to feel as if the entire exercise is pointless is not a positive result either. Lower tier players who run into Baral cycles lack the collection (and sometimes the wherewithal) to combat these overpowered effects.

Interactivity benefits the game. Paper magic learned this a long time ago, and the game improved because of it.

One final thing: We don't need an easy button. We never have. Please quit with the insults, both veiled and not veiled, as it's becoming tiresome.

Monkeynutts

Im playing Baral in a Kiora deck with Managorger Hydra and 8 spells....

GrizzoMtGPQ

madwren,

I completely agree with your statement. I dislike Baral because on a lucky RNG the AI can win against you turn 1. That's a stupid thing to allow. I also hate waiting through an endless stream of spells. It is super easy to set up a troll deck that NEVER stops. I could craft that and unleash it into QB and if you hit it you'll just have to quit. Is that fun? Is it a good design?

I too am arguing against my own self interest. Sure you can kill Baral. That's not the point. The AI can drop it and game over you before you have any chance to respond, from an absolute dominance position. Sure there are other scenarios like that (Deploy, etc) but most take some time to set up or you can see coming as the AI charges big stuff. Baral is so cheap and his combo setup is so cheap that you cannot effectively do anything once it drops at the right point. It's a bad design for a card.

wereotter

madwren wrote:

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.

My point is it's a valid comparison when making the complaint that the AI can kill you in just a couple turns with Baral. The same argument can be levied against Olivia as was the point I was making.

gruntface

Chiming in as someone who has spent money twice on this game (Gisela and Baral, largely fueled by Olivia, lack of buyers regret).

The major problems with Baral seem to be:
1) He can be bought and therefore is not restricted to just the top power players (who can win event exclusive mythics) or the very lucky. I am neither a top player or very lucky but I do have a debit card in my wallet.
2) He is a one card combo. I have 6 common cards in my Baral Saheeli deck and can't think of any other deck I have that is semi-competitive that has anything close to that many commons.
3) Easy to launch into lengthy chains that slow the game up for every match he is in.

Overall this means he is therefore more likely to be in an opposing deck than many of the latest power cards and if so, that deck will be on average more fiendish than an average deck that simply has Olivia, Bacon, Deploy etc which can be more easily isolated and dealt with. It is also much easier for the AI to run with as a lot of the looping is on autopilot.

This one card, on it's own, with even a basic collection, can therefore change the landscape of the game, especially if even average players like myself can take more than I should be able to with the cards he is paired with.

So it does feel like this would warrant a revision in either his stats or his cost (personally I would increase his mana cost to 20 or so making it harder to get him out and leaving what is often a one trick pony deck to be exposed). I would also say with some certainty that should he be nerfed, it will be the last dollar I ever spend on this game. I bought it in the full knowledge that it would open some previously closed doors to me.

Ultimately this card makes the game a lot less exclusive and that can both be good and bad. I ardently wish the game reverted back to that time it was on turbo mode and let us choose to switch it on or off and let us average folks enjoy our time butting heads with the elite but I understand why a re-balancing may be on the way. I won't be happy about it and will vote with my wallet in the future, but I understand.

I look forward to the next round of nerf requests when Masterpiece cards drop and people come up with new and diabolical ways to break the game

nexus13

I think I realize the problem. Someone at D3 got Baral and Depala's casting costs mixed up.

andrewvanmarle

madwren wrote:

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.

There's no reason to play Mind's Dilation or Kambal against the vast majority of the blue decks out there. So, if you're putting those in everytime you face blue, you aren't playing smart. It's fine to discuss precautions, but they need to be reasonable precautions that a person would take against a typical deck.

Ok, claustrofobia.....

Using one precaution card in a deck is smart, especially when you can make good use of it even if you dont face baral. Yes baral changes the meta, and a good player adapts to that.

Dologan

I like Baral. I like that it has enabled me to have a shot at those "less than X turns" crazy bonus objectives that almost seem to have been designed with him in mind. I like that it has breathed new life into several cards that had otherwise just been sitting gathering dust (I used to think Metallurgic Summonings was a rubbish mythic. Baral proves that wrong). I have been eagerly waiting for Saheeli to show up in the vault so I can try even more combos.

But madwren (and others) are spot on that infinite or very long loops by the AI are very negative to the game experience of everyone and if Baral's mechanics is making them too frequent and easy to pull off, this should not be allowed to stand (and probably won't, as loop-generating mechanics is one thing that invariably has led to nerfs so far). I do not envy the developers' task of fixing this while justifying the fact that the have been charging a significant amount of money for the card. I personally only paid the $30 (which would otherwise buy me a whole new PC videogame) because I saw that potential, and would regard an early nerf that turns him into another underwhelming card as rather fradulent if they don't offer refunds or meaningful compensation for it. Somehow, they need to make sure Baral stays very powerful and top-tier, while curtailing his ability to cycle near endlessly with little effort. I don't claim to know exactly how to do this, but I hope that when considering their options they will stay true to the spirit of the paper card, which is that of a cheap, lowish-powered spell-casting enabler that also draws cards in certain conditions.

buscemi

Breezed through World Breaker with both objectives.

Man, that 'Lose >=10 creature' objective is some boring, huh? No wonder nobody ever usually bothers to do it.

Astralwind

Let's see how this can be resolved.
I see the biggest gripe people have stated is the seemingly endless cycling that would have dragged a game longer than it should be.
That in my opinion is a problem. Nobody likes to be placed in those situations.
One workaround to this is to set aside cards that can deal with Baral.
There are many options, not limited to just Mind's Dilation or Kambal.
Everybody to some extent, will have creature removals, creature control, burn spells etc.
Even if they don't use creature removals or creature controls, they can make use of a defender/vigilance/berserker creature to finish off Baral.
Another such card would be the masterpiece card - Defense Grid.
I personally think Baral's not going to be a big issue because there're many ways to deal with him, and you don't really need specialized cards like Kambal or Mind's Dilation or Defense Grid.
In MTG, there're always cases of creature OP-ness but what I have learnt over years of playing MTG is that, creatures are easily dealt with.
Most top player decks have strategy against creature OP-ness of all sort, hexproof being the most difficult to deal with.

But let's just be fair to new players who doesn't have a complete arsenal of anti-creature cards.
So let's say this card needs a change.
The developers need to be careful with the change so that people who have bought it don't feel upset.
How can they achieve this?
Some possibilities:
1) Raise the creature cost to some extent but have to make sure it's still worth an exclusive mythic level. Instead of 8, maybe 10 to 12?
2) Maybe they can change the ability to: At the beginning of your turn, draw a card and this card gains X(3 to 6?) mana cost. When a spell is cast, draw a card.
This would probably break the endless cycle but still gives Baral the mythic advantage of card drawing capabilities with spell cast.
Alternatively, they can phrase it as such: For each spell card "DRAWN", that card gains 3 mana. When a spell is cast, "FETCH" the next card in your library.
The distinction between drawing and fetch works differently and endless cycling won't be possible. So if I use artificer's epiphany to draw a card, yes, that will gain me 3 mana if the draw is a spellcard. But if I fetch a spell card after casting a spell, it won't fill up 3 mana.

It really depends on the initial intent of the card designer. What is Baral good at in the folklore and what role does he play in MTGPQ?
Long story short, this card can be redesigned again if required but make sure it still has the mythic quality of a paid card.
Even if that change is not going to happen, for the sake of the newer players and unlucky players who can never draw the required card in the required situation, give us an option to speed/skip/turn off animations.

Monkeynutts

Soon as u see Baral and he starts going off and the cards you see are all 3 or less mana i just quit. I have better things to do...

It just proves how poor the developers are...They knew this would be abused....

But theyll say they play tested it..... ROFL.....

killwind

A continuation of my earlier post, Baral does not need to be nerfed. I played and won my QB today and yes, and in it there was every variant of Baral that you could have imagined. In the almost 400 games I played since last night only 1 Baral deck required me to quit out of the application. Meanwhile the old troll decks forced me to quit many times, L2 Zombie Bomb, Drowner Waterveil combo deck. But only 1 Baral. It wasnt anything special there wasnt a new or abusive combo in it, it just did nothing for close on to 5 minutes but juggle cards. So I took my loss and moved on. So if Baral does not break one of the more brutal formats in MtgPQ I dont know what all the griping is about.

Oh sorry, I was reprimanded today that whining is an acceptable form of communication.

Mainloop25

@ohboy curious to hear your. 02

Ohboy

Mainloop25 wrote:

@ohboy curious to hear your. 02

Well I thought Rashmi was potentially game breaking, and lamented to anyone who would listen that baral was going to make my Rashmi obsolete before I could open her in boosters so....

A 5/5 body for 8 is already pretty good. A blue body that gives all your spells in hand 3 mana is super efficient. Draws a card for each spell you cast puts it in top tier. Gives the drawn card 3 mana if it's a spell puts it at the top of my ranking before I even consider and count the number of 3 cost spells I can put in my deck.

What I've enjoyed about magic has always been those cards I call "answers searching for a question". Baral is the question that several "answers" have been waiting for. Unfortunately, they're not great answers...but more on that later.

What are the answers to baral? Well non target support disable is obviously the best one. In this category, we have off the top of my head :

Suppression bonds
Claustrophobia
Authority of the councils

These cards allow you to stop the loop from happening on the turn baral hits the board.

Then we have the next turn solutions, which are the oft touted removals, too many to list

Those are the hard answers to baral. Soft answers include several cards whose purpose has been of some question till now. Cards like:

Mind dilation
Kambal
Scan clan berserker

As I pointed out earlier, none of these are great answers to an easily cast loop because part of the loop usually kills them, they're easily removed , or they don't give enough benefit to offset the huge gain from a baral loop if it doesn't kill you outright.

Add to the fact that baral can easily outrace your solutions because he costs so little, and it can sometimes turn the meta guessing game up a few notches. This is actually good for the game if only there were better answers to "paper" than "rusty broken scissors".

The new masterpiece card will give us a good answer to baral, and I think we'll probably see a few more in the next expansion. For now he's about as game breaking as Gaea revenge was back when it first got buffed because there were few answers available, but the effects are more felt now because he's available to anyone with a a credit card. Like Gaea revenge, we'll probably see answers stream in soon, so I wouldn't worry.

If people are willing to pay for this advantage, I say let them enjoy it for a few weeks. Anything that shakes up the meta is nice, and the closer we are to a new expansion when something OP hits, the less we need to panic needlessly. Rashmi didn't pan out to be as good/trollish as I thought, and the people I've spoken to who have baral seem to think he isn't the one turn killer I thought he was (and experinced) either.

I predicted terrors this week would be interesting only because baral was now in play and it didn't disappoint. I met a good number of barals, and they convinced me I needed to redo my decks from scratch to account for the shift in the new meta. It's been great and interesting for me at least. Uphill battles are the most interesting part of any game. For reference, I lost one game in that event, and it was because I guessed it was a baral deck when it wasn't, and misplayed my opening hand. That's amazing, and I want that aspect of the game to grow.

That said, I would be extremely disappointed if more answers are not made available to us in the new expansion.

blacklotus

nexus13 wrote:

I think I realize the problem. Someone at D3 got Baral and Depala's casting costs mixed up.

i would definitely play depala if she is 8mana.

blacklotus

buscemi wrote:

Breezed through World Breaker with both objectives.

Man, that 'Lose >=10 creature' objective is some boring, huh? No wonder nobody ever usually bothers to do it.

moon your own non-baral critter 10x. obj met.

andrewvanmarle

Ohboy wrote:

Mainloop25 wrote:

@ohboy curious to hear your. 02

Well I thought Rashmi was potentially game breaking, and lamented to anyone who would listen that baral was going to make my Rashmi obsolete before I could open her in boosters so....

A 5/5 body for 8 is already pretty good. A blue body that gives all your spells in hand 3 mana is super efficient. Draws a card for each spell you cast puts it in top tier. Gives the drawn card 3 mana if it's a spell puts it at the top of my ranking before I even consider and count the number of 3 cost spells I can put in my deck.

What I've enjoyed about magic has always been those cards I call "answers searching for a question". Baral is the question that several "answers" have been waiting for. Unfortunately, they're not great answers...but more on that later.

What are the answers to baral? Well non target support disable is obviously the best one. In this category, we have off the top of my head :

Suppression bonds
Claustrophobia
Authority of the councils

These cards allow you to stop the loop from happening on the turn baral hits the board.

Then we have the next turn solutions, which are the oft touted removals, too many to list

Those are the hard answers to baral. Soft answers include several cards whose purpose has been of some question till now. Cards like:

Mind dilation
Kambal
Scan clan berserker

As I pointed out earlier, none of these are great answers to an easily cast loop because part of the loop usually kills them, they're easily removed , or they don't give enough benefit to offset the huge gain from a baral loop if it doesn't kill you outright.

Add to the fact that baral can easily outrace your solutions because he costs so little, and it can sometimes turn the meta guessing game up a few notches. This is actually good for the game if only there were better answers to "paper" than "rusty broken scissors".

The new masterpiece card will give us a good answer to baral, and I think we'll probably see a few more in the next expansion. For now he's about as game breaking as Gaea revenge was back when it first got buffed because there were few answers available, but the effects are more felt now because he's available to anyone with a a credit card. Like Gaea revenge, we'll probably see answers stream in soon, so I wouldn't worry.

If people are willing to pay for this advantage, I say let them enjoy it for a few weeks. Anything that shakes up the meta is nice, and the closer we are to a new expansion when something OP hits, the less we need to panic needlessly. Rashmi didn't pan out to be as good/trollish as I thought, and the people I've spoken to who have baral seem to think he isn't the one turn killer I thought he was (and experinced) either.

I predicted terrors this week would be interesting only because baral was now in play and it didn't disappoint. I met a good number of barals, and they convinced me I needed to redo my decks from scratch to account for the shift in the new meta. It's been great and interesting for me at least. Uphill battles are the most interesting part of any game. For reference, I lost one game in that event, and it was because I guessed it was a baral deck when it wasn't, and misplayed my opening hand. That's amazing, and I want that aspect of the game to grow.

That said, I would be extremely disappointed if more answers are not made available to us in the new expansion.

Thank you ohboy, you formulated my thoughts better than i could have myself.

Better than nerfing a strong card like Baral it's better to give us (more) answers to him.

Thats what the meta does, force you to revise your tried and tested strategies and take certain threats into account when facing a certain pw.

__Adam

$30 for a single card in a mobile game is pretty steep; it should be quite potent and impact game play allowing new combinations and strategies. Baral achieves this. Add me to the list of people that would never even consider buying another mythic if Baral was nerfed significantly. (This assumes there'd be no refunds or other compensation)

I'd also have to agree that he doesn't seem all that much more powerful than Gate (esp. with Mirror Pool), Olivia or Startled Awake. Sure, there are some QoL issues he creates that should be addressed, but an overall reduction in power is unacceptable.

Ohboy

--Adam wrote:

$30 for a single card in a mobile game is pretty steep; it should be quite potent and impact game play allowing new combinations and strategies. Baral achieves this. Add me to the list of people that would never even consider buying another mythic if Baral was nerfed significantly. (This assumes there'd be no refunds or other compensation)

I'd also have to agree that he doesn't seem all that much more powerful than Gate (esp. with Mirror Pool), Olivia or Startled Awake. Sure, there are some QoL issues he creates that should be addressed, but an overall reduction in power is unacceptable.

Make no mistake, while I'm saying he'll probably be fine eventually, I rate him as currently above Olivia and definitely way above startled awake.

Mainloop25

Yeah, playing with him for almost a week now, I just find it a fun card to make unorthodox decks that I would have never dreamed up before. Baral with Trail of Evidence floods the board with clues so you can take advantage of all sorts of things with that. Heck it brought Tezz1 out of obscurity.