Breaking Point is being broken by B#%@!

Machine

I was really excited with this new event. Finally some good rewards in an event, both personal progression and coalition rewards! Finally able to play with Saheeli since a whole long time when she was introduced. My fun was diminished quickly. Saheeli is blue/red and the other nodes can be used by any other walker. What's the tinykitty result? Almost every blue deck I face has Baral meaning no chance at all to win. So, not only did people buy Baral, they effectively also bought Mechanized Production. Way to go D3! There is no way that players like me, that don't own Baral, have any chance of competing for the top prizes. What's the tinykitty point to have top 50 get that nice mythic if I don't even manage to place top 250? I already lost track of how many matches I lost this event thanks to Baral. I don't want to pay for cards to do well in events. I want to do well because of skill.

People in my coaltion are complaining about Baral, ironically even people that own him. They also complain that playing him is no longer fun. They threaten to quit this game if nothing is going to happen very soon.

Before I asked to nerf / fix him. Now I'm BEGGING. He is breaking your game rapidly!!

I know there are a lot of threads about him, but I don't know if there has been any communication from D3 / Hibernum to this community regarding their plans about him. You have a great game but my love for it is turning into hate.

I'm just so pissed right now that it's better for me not to say a single word anymore...

Spiritwalker

Exactly my thoughts.

It's frustrating enough that I'm always up against pretty much only three players' decks, all of which are STACKED and make it very hard to complete the secondary objectives.

Two of my four losses are because of Baral comboing off within the first few turns. At this point my only hope to beat such a deck is them not drawing him before I beat them.

I also lost against a nahiri and a sarkhan cascading and extra swapping into a steady flow of avacyns for nahiri and removal for sarkhan, but these losses are not nearly as infuriating.

Right now I'm only slamming my phone onto a soft surface if I lose to Baral, but it won't take much longer until I quit this game entirely because of Baral.

For the love of god D3, if you won't nerf him at least make it so we can't encounter Baral decks in any event/quickplay. I've already quit quickplay because of him, the only reason I still play this game is because I got offered a spot in a top 10 coalition.

morgue427

hmm i will have to ask for a refund then because i bought him, yes boring to play but no top 50 for me and i have run into very few running him honestly and when i do imprision or kill him first thing

Machine

IF you have a chance to kill him, you have to hope your spells aren't Negated, you have to hope you have a kill spell in hand and you have to hope that you can use it right away. That's a lot of ifs. This card is broken as hell and ruins the entire meta. I don't understand why they released this card in its current form. All about the $$$.

buscemi

Machine wrote:

All about the $$$.

Isn't it tho? All this guff we're being fed about 'It's hard to balance cards, and sometimes we get it wrong!' is just nonsense. We picked out Baral as a problem card in the forum way before it was released, and they released it anyway. They're going to do the same with Rishkar's Expertise. Fact. There's no possible way that they'll change their mind so that I turn out to be wrong, and so everyone can have a good laugh in my face. I'm absolutely 100% confident about this, and if they DO change it, I will perform some kind of humiliating act live on facebook.

If, by some crazy misalignment of the stars, there genuinely is no-one who works on card design that can't tell if a card is balanced or not, then they should probably hire someone who does. My guess, tho, is that even if they did, he'd hand in the design, and then someone in accounting with no understanding of the game would just 'push the power level up a bit' before release.

Does anyone remember what the original version of Shrine of the Forsaken Gods did before they beefed it up to sell it?

morgue427

havent had a problem killing him in the times i have seen him really. many of the decks i have seen the ai using dont have offensive spells to take your stuff out except imprison in the moon and negate is a worry but it is a one round thing move it up to fill first and usually you are fine, hell seen the ai use reclaim on its own baral and imprison another one, seems the ai is its own worst enemy really to me. plus if the use haunted cloak to buff him he just becomes a mob you can over power and kill that way

Mainloop25

When is the last time they did a real rebalancing of problematic cards anyways? They seem to only do 1 or 2 at a time. Sure, Gonti Heart is not infinite - loop anymore. But there are a lot more problem cards. I think they will be forced to change Baral. Right now he is the most powerful card in the game.

Diabeetus

I'm one of the folks in Machine's guild complaining. I have a separate thread about this too. I bought him. I detest him. I hate him even more than Koth, and that is saying something. He's beyond broken. Hell with you people that just say, "Oh kill him off with Imprisoned in the Moon." I DO NOT HAVE IT. MANY OF US NEW PLAYERS DON'T. I have to rack up enough mana to cast a more expensive card, which is hard to do with him using negate over and over.

PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU NERF HIM.

Azerack

I will say regarding the event I've never been fond of the TOP players winning the event card because it just continues the cycle, in most games, of the "L337" staying that way and the rest of us staying NOT that way.

I definitely prefer being able to get the event cards via the personal ribbon achievements.

That being said, my Baral deck is NOT in this event and while I haven't seen any Baral decks (yet) I understand the annoyance.

Waiting to see what will happen with Baral-gate..

Mainloop25

My guess is that Baral will be changed. People will be glad, but there will be many chargebacks.

Machine

They have themselves to blame. Before the release of Baral there were several players warning for his OPness. Still, it was released. This whole charade will happen again with Rishkar's Expertise if they don't change its current form before releasing it.

morgue427

imprision is only one example blue has tones of ways to bounce him back most cost 4, yes i know it has to have less than 6 cards but becasue of the ai it will end the chain when it runs out of spells so everything left cant be insta cast so hmm he cast one card on his next turn and he as hmm 5 cards good time to blast him back to the owner.

jimilinho_

morgue427 wrote:

imprision is only one example blue has tones of ways to bounce him back most cost 4, yes i know it has to have less than 6 cards but becasue of the ai it will end the chain when it runs out of spells so everything left cant be insta cast so hmm he cast one card on his next turn and he as hmm 5 cards good time to blast him back to the owner.

The problem with Baral is that AI turns can take several minutes, plus when you have an objective such as 'lose 2 or less creatures and Baral chains 3 imprisons, it's pretty damn depressing

Diabeetus

morgue427 wrote:

imprision is only one example blue has tones of ways to bounce him back most cost 4, yes i know it has to have less than 6 cards but becasue of the ai it will end the chain when it runs out of spells so everything left cant be insta cast so hmm he cast one card on his next turn and he as hmm 5 cards good time to blast him back to the owner.

And if you're playing green?

Or should we all just make our decks now only revolve around how we will deal with Baral? Because I think that's bull pizzle.

andrewvanmarle

We allready have a nerf baral thread. It serves no purpose to open a new one other than to spam the boards with your request.

@brigby, is it possible to consolidate these tbreads?

Diabeetus

andrewvanmarle wrote:

We allready have a nerf baral thread. It serves no purpose to open a new one other than to spam the boards with your request.

@brigby, is it possible to consolidate these tbreads?

It's not being addressed or even acknowledged, so clearly our voices aren't being heard yet. Having it be just one thread weakens the visibility of the discontent.

andrewvanmarle

Contrary to your beliefs, its actually easier for the devs to read about a fopic in one consolidated thread, easier mean a better chance they will read it and might act on it.

Beside that it's poor board etiquette to stsrt multiple threads about the same topic

Steeme

I ran into a handful of Baral decks, but not that many.

In only one of the encounters, the AI continuously looped for under a minute. I did get board wiped and miss out on the tertiary objective (1 ribbon), but I was still able to just drop him and continue with the match.

In the other matches, I could see by the AI playing a boring array of useless 3-cost spells that Baral was in the deck somewhere, but the AI is not smart enough to try and fish for it specifically (ie. save loyalty until tutoring the creature, or prioritizing card draw, etc.). So many times it is basically how well you can control the match once you know what's coming.

If Negate or Scatter is an issue for you, think about having a removal spell banked and not in your first slot (think about how to protect your cards just like when you face Liliana). You should be employing this strategy at all times, considering how much practice you have against players running Olivia (which many people cry about as well).

Diabeetus wrote:

Hell with you people that just say, "Oh kill him off with Imprisoned in the Moon." I DO NOT HAVE IT. MANY OF US NEW PLAYERS DON'T. I have to rack up enough mana to cast a more expensive card, which is hard to do with him using negate over and over.

PLEASE I AM BEGGING YOU NERF HIM.

I question your deck-building and gameplay. Do you have some type of card in your deck to protect your hand? Eg. Haunted Cloak or Demolish, fill it up in the first slot in your hand and leave it disabled. Continue to fill up mana and play the rest of your hand. If Baral comes along and negates your card, it just drains the first card, not the rest of your hand. Same strategy when playing Liliana. This seems like it may be an L2P issue.

Diabeetus wrote:

morgue427 wrote:

imprision is only one example blue has tones of ways to bounce him back most cost 4, yes i know it has to have less than 6 cards but becasue of the ai it will end the chain when it runs out of spells so everything left cant be insta cast so hmm he cast one card on his next turn and he as hmm 5 cards good time to blast him back to the owner.

And if you're playing green?

Or should we all just make our decks now only revolve around how we will deal with Baral? Because I think that's bull pizzle.

Again, this may be an L2P issue. You brought a Mono-Green planeswalker to a PVP tournament? Are you nuts?

Mono-colour anything is quite the gamble. It is quite important to have the utility of splashing multiple colours. Now I'm not saying that you can't bring J2 or L2 or G1, but typically the players that succeed in that respect have highly optimized decks with all of the key cards. If you don't have that type of library, it's much tougher to "cover all the angles" with a restricted set of cards.

jimilinho_ wrote:

The problem with Baral is that AI turns can take several minutes, plus when you have an objective such as 'lose 2 or less creatures and Baral chains 3 imprisons, it's pretty damn depressing

This I agree with. I don't have an infinite amount of time to play matches, but the AI does. There is the potential for matches getting dragged out too long. It's not fun.

andrewvanmarle

if the problem is matches dragging out too long, can we then also make sure I don't'encounter disable/bounce decks anymore? Those can take 45 minutes if unlucky.

Baral is not a win button. and you -can- anticipate him. He is part of the new meta, deal with it. And by that I mean, build your deck not with your own win comdition in mind but also the threats from the opposed decks. you get a blue opponent? sideboard.....

Thésée

Steeme wrote:

If Negate or Scatter is an issue for you, think about having a removal spell banked and not in your first slot (think about how to protect your cards just like when you face Liliana). You should be employing this strategy at all times, considering how much practice you have against players running Olivia (which many people cry about as well).

This defensive tactic works good against Scatter which targets only the mana from first card, but not against repeated Negates that can drain the mana from all your hand

Best defense against Negate is to Exile all your cards ! Negate can't be cast and become dead cards that break the loops of a Baral deck.

Well of course exiling your cards is a suicidal defense ....

buscemi

Machine wrote:

So, not only did people buy Baral, they effectively also bought Mechanized Production. Way to go D3! There is no way that players like me, that don't own Baral, have any chance of competing for the top prizes.

Nobody seems to be addressing this point. I wonder why? I think the least that those of us who bought Baral can do is stand up and say 'Yes! I paid for power, and now I'm reaping the benefits!'.

All this weasely 'Well there are cards you can play against him to make your chances a bit higher sometimes, and I don't ALWAYS win EVERY game I play with Baral without having to make some decisions' leaves a bad taste in my mouth.