Ideas to fix (not nerf) Baral

PastrySpider

I wanted to start a thread to compile ideas on how to adjust Baral. To be clear, I want to suggest ideas to the dev which aren't a strict nerf (i.e., just purely makes him worse). Such ideas would include things like making him cost 25 mana, removing the card draw or cutting his mana provided down to 1. These ideas are going to have a big backlash because it was a purchased card.

My suggest is to see if we as a community can find a way to change him so that he is less annoying to play against (which means removing his endless spell loops) but actually also makes him interesting in new ways. Best idea I've had so far is to change his ability so that instead of giving mana on card draw, it gives all spells in your hand 3 mana at the beginning of the turn. This means he can still loop, just a max of 6 cards. However, you can also use more expensive spells and have them charge up over multiple turns. So if you used 6 mana spells, you could loop every two turns. This actually expands him into new strategies. Functionally, it might still be a nerf because he's not quite as powerful as before but it balances out somewhat because he's more flexible.

Other ideas I've had:
1) provide 6 mana to the first spell in your hand each turn.
2) Reduce the casting cost of spells by 5 to a minimum of 1 mana.

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium

I'll rehash something that I posted in the Suggestions section a week or two ago. Basically, make it so that we can't play against him in any matches. That way, everyone who purchased him will get full use out of him, but we won't have to worry about dealing with him.

Mainloop25

Providing 3 mana to spells at the beginning of every turn still makes him very powerful without causing endless loops. If people are unsatisfied and still want their money back, then so be it. It will be the consequence of releasing such a game-breaking card in the first place

SpaceDuck

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium wrote:

I'll rehash something that I posted in the Suggestions section a week or two ago. Basically, make it so that we can't play against him in any matches. That way, everyone who purchased him will get full use out of him, but we won't have to worry about dealing with him.

This is probably the best option. If it was not for troll decks he wouldn't be an issue.

There are other, even stronger, recursion engines in the game already. This is just one that even the AI can reliably set off. He also gives a clear advantage on "win in X" nodes, but honestly those are a problem by themselves.

wereotter

I took my solution from looking at the actual paper card. It has the abilities of:

"Instant and sorcery spells you cast cost 1 less to cast. Whenever a spell or ability you control counters a spell, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card."

His translation into Puzzle Quest is obviously not a good one, but also not entirely off. I think the option of making your spells cost less might have had some programming issues as I believe only Origins Jace's second ability makes spells cost less, so giving them mana seems fair adaptation. Also spells in general cost more in Puzzle Quest than they do in paper magic, so three mana also seems right.

However where we've lost it is that second ability. Apart from Insidious Will, there are no real counterspells in Puzzle Quest, so I get where they had to make something up for him, however, drawing a card whenever you cast a spell is really the part of the situation where he becomes broken, and so I've made the proposition of simply changing his second ability to "Whenever you discard a card, draw a card." Granted this is something that wouldn't really be triggered very often, mostly we'd see it in Saheeli with Tormenting Voice and Cathartic Reunion, but also you could use Catalog in blue to better effect, and he would be HIGHLY effective against Origins Liliana, and many of the Ob Nixilis builds floating out there, so still worth running.

PastrySpider

While its an interesting idea, I don't think blacklisting cards from vs play because they are annoying is a good idea. You can make arguments that Olivia, Seasons past, Gonti's Aether Heart and many other cards are annoying to play against. It allows the devs to make bad cards and then ignore the problem by just removing them from being seen and will have the community clamoring to pull out cards they don't like.

Furthermore, if we start blacklisting cards, that will further reduce the pool of decks to play against.

If we really went down this path of changing the game around the card, I would have suggested just to limit the number of cards the AI player will ever cast in a turn to say 10. No more long loops, anywhere.

PastrySpider

wereotter wrote:

I took my solution from looking at the actual paper card. It has the abilities of:

"Instant and sorcery spells you cast cost 1 less to cast. Whenever a spell or ability you control counters a spell, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card."

His translation into Puzzle Quest is obviously not a good one, but also not entirely off. I think the option of making your spells cost less might have had some programming issues as I believe only Origins Jace's second ability makes spells cost less, so giving them mana seems fair adaptation. Also spells in general cost more in Puzzle Quest than they do in paper magic, so three mana also seems right.

However where we've lost it is that second ability. Apart from Insidious Will, there are no real counterspells in Puzzle Quest, so I get where they had to make something up for him, however, drawing a card whenever you cast a spell is really the part of the situation where he becomes broken, and so I've made the proposition of simply changing his second ability to "Whenever you discard a card, draw a card." Granted this is something that wouldn't really be triggered very often, mostly we'd see it in Saheeli with Tormenting Voice and Cathartic Reunion, but also you could use Catalog in blue to better effect, and he would be HIGHLY effective against Origins Liliana, and many of the Ob Nixilis builds floating out there, so still worth running.

This idea is pretty much a flat out nerf since it adds nothing new and strictly decreases the value of an ability. It also ends up significantly devaluing him. There just aren't enough discard effects for this to not trigger a mass refund call.

wereotter

PastrySpider wrote:

wereotter wrote:

I took my solution from looking at the actual paper card. It has the abilities of:

"Instant and sorcery spells you cast cost 1 less to cast. Whenever a spell or ability you control counters a spell, you may draw a card. If you do, discard a card."

His translation into Puzzle Quest is obviously not a good one, but also not entirely off. I think the option of making your spells cost less might have had some programming issues as I believe only Origins Jace's second ability makes spells cost less, so giving them mana seems fair adaptation. Also spells in general cost more in Puzzle Quest than they do in paper magic, so three mana also seems right.

However where we've lost it is that second ability. Apart from Insidious Will, there are no real counterspells in Puzzle Quest, so I get where they had to make something up for him, however, drawing a card whenever you cast a spell is really the part of the situation where he becomes broken, and so I've made the proposition of simply changing his second ability to "Whenever you discard a card, draw a card." Granted this is something that wouldn't really be triggered very often, mostly we'd see it in Saheeli with Tormenting Voice and Cathartic Reunion, but also you could use Catalog in blue to better effect, and he would be HIGHLY effective against Origins Liliana, and many of the Ob Nixilis builds floating out there, so still worth running.

This idea is pretty much a flat out nerf since it adds nothing new and strictly decreases the value of an ability. It also ends up significantly devaluing him. There just aren't enough discard effects for this to not trigger a mass refund call.

There are enough for red/blue that he would still have a place. I mentioned Cathartic Reunion and Tormenting Voice, but there's also Lightning Axe, Spark of Creativity, and Mad Prophet which come to mind. Within blue, it changes Catalog from "discard 1 card and draw 2 cards" to "discard one card and draw 3 cards", Pour over the Pages becomes "discard 1 card, draw 4 cards and gain 6 mana", Sphinx's Tutelage would give the ability to discard a card and draw two cards, and Days Undoing would draw you up to a full hand rather than draw 5. The value wouldn't be immediately apparent, but with cards like Whispers of Emrakul, Transgress the Mind, and Infinite Obliteration being (sometimes) used as well as Origins Liliana spamming her discard ability every chance she gets, being able to maintain card advantage is a pretty powerful ability. Yes, its not as game breaking as his ability now to chain off cheap spells for 15 minutes, but that's exactly what we're trying to fix, is it not?

Off the top of my head, I could also suggest more appropriately mirroring his second ability with something like an "activate 3, your opponent loses 3 mana. You discard a card then draw a card"

madwren

Mainloop25 wrote:

Providing 3 mana to spells at the beginning of every turn still makes him very powerful without causing endless loops. If people are unsatisfied and still want their money back, then so be it. It will be the consequence of releasing such a game-breaking card in the first place

Hear, hear. That's what I suggested as well. It's still powerful, but stops the cycling, which is the root evil.

mouser

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium wrote:

I'll rehash something that I posted in the Suggestions section a week or two ago. Basically, make it so that we can't play against him in any matches. That way, everyone who purchased him will get full use out of him, but we won't have to worry about dealing with him.

It's an excellent solution that you shouldn't have to play against another AI controlled player deck with Baral. And I hope the devs add coding where they can selectively remove decks from the pool of opponents you face if they include a specific card or combination of cards.

I still see that as a short term stopgap though. Quickly remove the problem from the player experience now, allowing more time to come up with an appropriate change to the card in the future where it can be reintroduced into the opponent decks.

Rough Tonality

PastrySpider wrote:

While its an interesting idea, I don't think blacklisting cards from vs play because they are annoying is a good idea. You can make arguments that Olivia, Seasons past, Gonti's Aether Heart and many other cards are annoying to play against. It allows the devs to make bad cards and then ignore the problem by just removing them from being seen and will have the community clamoring to pull out cards they don't like.

Furthermore, if we start blacklisting cards, that will further reduce the pool of decks to play against.

If we really went down this path of changing the game around the card, I would have suggested just to limit the number of cards the AI player will ever cast in a turn to say 10. No more long loops, anywhere.

Your counter-argument has merit. On the other hand, though, with previous cards that have broken the game - and this is by far the worst, in my opinion - alterations have been made to balance the game play. Doing so with this card would be problematic in that it would do away with exactly what people wanted when they paid for it.

So what to do? Just leave it outrageously broken? Nerf it and refund money? Or allow people to keep using it as designed to their advantage in battles they initiate, while removing decks with Baral from battles that aren't started by the respective owners of said decks?

I was a bit intrigued by the "10 cards max per turn" idea, as a potential to solve issues with a number of deck builds. I don't think it would go far enough with this one, though. There's way too much chance in those 10 cards to get Imprisoned or Scatter to the Winds, if not both. This one is just way too broken.

AngelForge

Provide the spells in hand and drawn with (casting cost - 1) mana with a maximum mana gain of 3.
This would be a small nerf but still very playable, I think.

Mainloop25

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium wrote:

I'll rehash something that I posted in the Suggestions section a week or two ago. Basically, make it so that we can't play against him in any matches. That way, everyone who purchased him will get full use out of him, but we won't have to worry about dealing with him.

Explain to me how that's supposed to work? You're just going to go up against a 9-card deck full of Artificers epiphany and coastal discovery instead??

Rough Tonality

Mainloop25 wrote:

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium wrote:

I'll rehash something that I posted in the Suggestions section a week or two ago. Basically, make it so that we can't play against him in any matches. That way, everyone who purchased him will get full use out of him, but we won't have to worry about dealing with him.

Explain to me how that's supposed to work? You're just going to go up against a 9-card deck full of Artificers epiphany and coastal discovery instead??

If I'm understanding correctly, the idea is to exclude not the card, but any deck entirely if Baral is in it.

andrewvanmarle

AngelForge wrote:

Provide the spells in hand and drawn with (casting cost - 1) mana with a maximum mana gain of 3.
This would be a small nerf but still very playable, I think.

meh, so you're'4 mana spells get 3 mana, then it's'more usefull to play brain in a jar than baral, a rare that doesn't'take up a creature slot.

I do agree that players to a chance to break the chain before it may even start.

What about Baral disabling himself till end of turn when he enters play. that way a player get the chance to kill him before he does his damage AND he can stop himself if he's'played during a loop (kiora)

Furks

I think the idea of charging your spells by x at the start of your turn instead of when you draw them would be a good change. It would prevent the infinite looping but also open up different approaches since you could charge more expensive spells over multiple turns. The amount by which your spells get charged can also be adjusted, I think it could easily go up to 5 or 6 to keep baral at a similar power level.

When it comes to deck building, it would also allow for more variations, you can now add more expensive spells to the deck, these would take multiple turns to charge up.

The biggest problem is that baral was for sale and nerfing something people spent money on is not a good idea. -insert rant about p2w-

Theros

Yawgmoths_Left_Ilium wrote:

I'll rehash something that I posted in the Suggestions section a week or two ago. Basically, make it so that we can't play against him in any matches. That way, everyone who purchased him will get full use out of him, but we won't have to worry about dealing with him.

Another idea is to have the AI get different version of card than the original, an idea adopted by some card games I played. Basically the AI's Baral will be a tweaked version not as broken as the original.
That approach can allow the dev to release cards that are cash worthy without fear, not abominations like depala or territorial georger (not working as intended)

Lightcell

Just add discard a card when you draw a card with his power. Maybe also make it that you can't draw a card if you can't discard a card.

hawkyh1

Lightcell wrote:

Just add discard a card when you draw a card with his power. Maybe also make it that you can't draw a card if you can't discard a card.

draw a 3 mana spell and discard a creature card... I do not like.
currently the only thing that is stopping the loops is the hand
filling up with non spells.

HH

babar3355

I am 100% certain that Hiberium is too inept at coding to be able to restrict decks out that have Baral in them. They cant even figure out to have a "random" opponent not be the same opponent every game.

I think a minor nerf would be very simple. Change his text from reading, whenever you play a spell "draw" a card. To whenever you play a spell "fetch" a card. If you have other card draw he can still fill the, but doesn't fill the cards he fetches himself. Easy peasy, fixed and still strongeezy.

PastrySpider

Switching from draw to fetch would qualify as a major nerf I'd say. It limits the mana he provides to cards drawn which is generally quite low.

Again, my suggest for this thread was not to nerf him but change him so he's still very good, just different. If you just downgrade his power, people have a very legitimate argument that they should get a refund as the card they bought is now strictly worse than it used to be.