Improving Old Walkers

BigSwifty

There was a survey put out a couple of months ago that touched on the idea of changing the abilities of older PWs. Is there precedent or confirmation that Dev is actually considering this, or was it just kind of shooting the breeze?

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ArielSira

Mostly it would be buffing managains (yes some have bad abilities too, hello Kaladesh era).

For example the 5 basic walkers, if their mana would go 4/2/2 instead of 3/1/1 they'd be a lot better already. Or 5/2/2/-1/-1.

Boogeyman

Can I add some requirements creep here?  Let's update the single player stories to include new planeswalker lore and challenges. 

James13

ArielSira said:

Mostly it would be buffing managains (yes some have bad abilities too, hello Kaladesh era).

Tezzeret Schemer is still a god and one of my favorites to play.  Still unrivaled in his niche of support spamming and a mainstay on relevant TotP days.

morgue427

ariel the mana gains more in line with newer pws would make them even better than most all of the rest again

FindingHeart8

ArielSira said:

Mostly it would be buffing managains (yes some have bad abilities too, hello Kaladesh era).

For example the 5 basic walkers, if their mana would go 4/2/2 instead of 3/1/1 they'd be a lot better already. Or 5/2/2/-1/-1.

Heck even 3/2/2 would make it significantly more competitive

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Mburn7

Simple solution:  Give every Origins and non-Kiora/Koth Zendikar walker +1 to all colors that already have a buff (so 3/2/2 for all the Origins, Ob, and Garruk, and Tezz1, and +1 to every color for Sarkhan1, and ZGid.  This is quick and easy, but not necessarily the best for all of the (although I can't see a reason it won't work)

Complex solution:  Spend a large amount of time analyzing each walker and carefully constructing ways to balance each one in the current walker meta.  This is the best way to do it, but also extremely time consuming.

Oktagon's most likely solution:  Do nothing and we'll never use these walkers outside of fun runs again.  Considering there will always be a new set to implement and new content to make its easy enough to keep saying there is not time for a fix and do nothing

wereotter

ArielSira said:

Mostly it would be buffing managains (yes some have bad abilities too, hello Kaladesh era).

For example the 5 basic walkers, if their mana would go 4/2/2 instead of 3/1/1 they'd be a lot better already. Or 5/2/2/-1/-1.

Their health totals are pretty subpar as well. Chandra, for example, has only 82 health compared to newer planeswalkers. Dovin has 111, Domri has 123, and Kaya has 101. Even compared to more recent red planeswalkers, Jaya has 108 and mono-red Sarkhan has 104.

Jace has a similar problem with 88 health while other newer walkers have 96 for Ixalan Jace and 106 for M19 Tezzeret.

BigSwifty

Origins PW abilities are pretty lacklustre compared to the newer walkers. Boosting the mana is the minimum of what needs to be done for them. Other walkers with sub par abilities could use tweaks as well, the most obvious of course being that Sorin needs about 20 more hp.

jtwood

starfall said:

They mention this every few months or so in the FAQ...

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/76501/q-a-w-oktagon-november-edition-12-12-18/p1
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/77472/q-a-w-oktagon-february-edition-2-28-19/p1

...but then forget about it to implement some kind of ill-received feature that nobody asked for...

https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/77603/your-thoughts-on-the-now-90-second-timer/p1
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/78142/long-time-veterans-player-level-adjustment-4-22-19/p1
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/78327/replacement-poll-what-do-you-think-of-the-new-vip-membership-system/p1

Balancing Planeswalkers is one of our biggest desires right now. Starting with the War of the Spark card set, you'll be seeing the first aspects of how we intent to rework Planeswalkers into the game, both progressively and retroactively. That will be just a preview though! This is something that takes a lot of time and requires systems that aren't in place right now, so we'll take it how we can; one step at a time. First one thing, then tweaks to values and abilities, then another thing (we can't say more right now!)

:shrug:

Machine

Apparently I'm in the minority here, but I really like how the basic walkers are right now. If I feel like taking on a challenge, I will dust them off and play with them. I don't think every walker has to have the same power level. Not playing with them is everybody's own choice.

Volrak

Sure, the basic walkers could be tweaked, but they're not all downside, and they're serving their purpose in the game as is.
All basic walkers have clear advantages in two areas over other walkers:

• Much cheaper cost (83% discount compared to other mono walkers)
• Much greater deck composition variety (average of 8.3 for creature/spell/support limits, compared to average of 6.2 for other walkers)

These things absolutely warrant at least some downsides in other areas.  Whether the trade-off is worth it is not only a value judgement, but one that changes depending on player stage.  New players are well served by buying and using basic walkers for a time.

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Mburn7

starfall said:

What about these old stinkers:

Ajani Unyielding
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Garruk Wildspeaker
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Huatli Warrior Poet

and Sorin even though he's one of the most played PWs for reasons I cannot fathom.

Greenjani does get some play because his abilities are solid, but only having +2 on green really hurts him.  Literally just giving him +1 green would make him pretty playable, if not quite as good as HuatliGreen

Chandra I don't think could be playable without a serious overhaul, since her abilities kind of stink conceptually (energize and then destroy the gems you just energized?  Wow, great!)

Garruk is a top walker as long as Path of Discovery stays standard.  Even when that rotates I'm not sure he's bad.
Bad bonuses in green are less impactful than in other colors (see:  Kiora).

Sorin just needs more health (+20 should be enough)
GidZ and Sarkhan1 and Tezz1 just need more mana (see my above post)

And Huatli I have no idea, I can't remember what she does 

Narcoticsagent

starfall said:

What about these old stinkers:

Ajani Unyielding
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Garruk Wildspeaker
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Huatli Warrior Poet

and Sorin even though he's one of the most played PWs for reasons I cannot fathom.

Whoa there... you need to lay off my boy Garruk. He is one of my favorite green walkers. I think he represents some design space that hasn't been explored much. I think hes designed with a pretty clear message that you can use loyalty for creatures and then focus your deck on exciting spells to back that up. 

Mburn7

Narcoticsagent said:

starfall said:

What about these old stinkers:

Ajani Unyielding
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Garruk Wildspeaker
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Huatli Warrior Poet

and Sorin even though he's one of the most played PWs for reasons I cannot fathom.

Whoa there... you need to lay off my boy Garruk. He is one of my favorite green walkers. I think he represents some design space that hasn't been explored much. I think hes designed with a pretty clear message that you can use loyalty for creatures and then focus your deck on exciting spells to back that up. 

That's literally what he was designed for lol.

If you want a blast from the past here's the initial announcement for him (from way back in 2016!)
https://forums.d3go.com/discussion/43570/new-planeswalkers-04-29-2016

BigSwifty

Then only tweak I would make to Garruk would be to find a way to give his summons an evergreen ability at higher levels. The snakes could have deathtouch, the wolves berserker and the beasts trample, or something along those lines. Could even be in the form of a support that gets spawned when you create the tokens, like you see on some of the new walkers.

Mburn7

BigSwifty said:

Then only tweak I would make to Garruk would be to find a way to give his summons an evergreen ability at higher levels. The snakes could have deathtouch, the wolves berserker and the beasts trample, or something along those lines. Could even be in the form of a support that gets spawned when you create the tokens, like you see on some of the new walkers.

That would be cool.  Tie it to the number of reinforcements they have and put it on the creatures themselves.
Make the threshold 10x or something

wereotter

starfall said:

What about these old stinkers:

Ajani Unyielding
Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Garruk Wildspeaker
Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
Huatli Warrior Poet

and Sorin even though he's one of the most played PWs for reasons I cannot fathom.

I'll play with that Chandra, but only occasionally. Her loyalty abilities are a definite problem, but her mana gains make her slighly less explosive but much more reliable than Koth since she has big mana on red and on black.

Though I do agree that if you're playing her in Legacy, and you don't have Dynavolt Tower and possibly a few other mythic rare supports, she's really poor when it comes to trying to use her abilities. You're basically just using her for mana gains.

Mburn7 said:

Redjani still gets a ton of play, although from what I can tell its just because he has better limits for HUF Deploy decks than Nahiri and better abilities than HuatliRed.

You're thinking of Ajani Vengeant. Ajani Unyielding is the white-green Ajani from Aether Revolt.