Skoti Bloodline & PMA Ajani

jtwood

@Oktagon_Support

PMA Ajani's low-cost PW abilities make him an overpowered choice for the Skoti Bloodline event. As a result, many of us are facing off against him on the majority of matches on every node.

First, do you have data to validate what we believe we are seeing, which is that players are choosing PMA Ajani for multiple nodes?

If that is something you can confirm, would it be possible to update the Skoti Bloodline so that players can only use a PW on a single node? Maybe that would help mitigate PMA Ajani's overuse?

BongoTheGrey

I think that PMA Ajani is the devs favorite child. They put a lot of love and effort on making him the best choice of a PW for almost any scenario.
He has an static ability that makes you always start the game with creature advantage. If you take damage that static ability auto recovers you health each turn until you are at full health. It has some amazing mana bonus. The cheapest most spammable Planeswalker abilities, is in a color that has several control tools to help you be aggressive by just letting him spam tokens while your deck focuses on controlling the match, has even more built in life gain with the enlist gems it creates with his PW abilities and has the fourth most max health on any PW with 130 just after Angrath with 135, Bolas 3 with 134 and Bolas 1 with 132.

This PW has everything you could ask for making the choice of playing with him one where you don't have any downside.

All that makes playing against him extremely boring. Not particularly difficult because you can control the token creation  but since white also has a lot of control, the matches can be really long and boring. I saw a coalition mate that shared a screenshot where they last 211 turns killing PMA Ajani in last weekend's coalition event. They finished at full health so they were never at the risk of losing the game, but it took forever to kill that boring cat.

I think that the main problem is Ajani's max health. A Planeswalker that has built in life gain shouldn't have more than 90 max health. In fact, it should be like black/white Sorin that has 82 max health.

Life total is never a problem when you are using PMA Ajani. But it is a big one when playing against him. You can have control of the tokens and all of Greg's creatures and be dealing damage and if Greg drops Hixus you have to worry about it before keep dealing damage. And since his PW abilities are cheap, spammable and create a ton of tokens, destroying Hixus is even more difficult. And while you are wasting time destroying Hixus Ajani is going back to 130 and you need to start all over again. If it went back to 82 max health you would also have to start all over again but the road is shorter making those matches less boring.

I'm ok with everything else on his kit. I think that nerfing his token creation or life gain would hit the essence of the PW which clearly is one of Oktagon's favorite ones and that's ok. But significantly lowering his health would be a great change while still being playable and without touching his essence.

Killroy

Nobody wants matches this long...

BongoTheGrey

Specially not that long when losing the game is not a risk. You finished at full health. You had everything under control. The cat was not a threat. But since it has 130 health and keeps gaining life back it is just a long, boring and painful match.

I auto quit when I'm against it in Training Grounds which is like half the matches. I just don't have time for that

Rant_Ent

i played all the event with ajani. Aside the second last game freeze, my main problem facing other ajani is that yes the game went long, not sure if is really a problem, almost for me i got all the time to drp 10 historic, or match 20 gems.

The longest match end at 44 (and was really long), but yes i'm quite aware of the problem too.

ArielSira

jtwood said:

@Oktagon_Support

PMA Ajani's low-cost PW abilities make him an overpowered choice for the Skoti Bloodline event. As a result, many of us are facing off against him on the majority of matches on every node.

First, do you have data to validate what we believe we are seeing, which is that players are choosing PMA Ajani for multiple nodes?

If that is something you can confirm, would it be possible to update the Skoti Bloodline so that players can only use a PW on a single node? Maybe that would help mitigate PMA Ajani's overuse?

I would love it if walkers were restricted to one node each event. It used to be like this anyway.

jtwood

Another "Ajani: The Event" coming soon

Janen

How right you were, jtwood!  I feel I have to use the standard PMA Ajani deck with Ollenbock and the usual suspects just to have a chance, but I won't do it!

To the devs: could you consider nerfing PMA Ajani a bit?  It feels 50% of matches in any event regardless of event goals are PMA Ajani with Ollenbock, armament master, usually hixus and nix, rainbow bridge, etc.  It gets old real fast.

He probably should have more expensive loyalty abilities, his white bonus is too high, I'm sure there are other things.

TIMEWARP

Janen said:

How right you were, jtwood!  I feel I have to use the standard PMA Ajani deck with Ollenbock and the usual suspects just to have a chance, but I won't do it!

To the devs: could you consider nerfing PMA Ajani a bit?  It feels 50% of matches in any event regardless of event goals are PMA Ajani with Ollenbock, armament master, usually hixus and nix, rainbow bridge, etc.  It gets old real fast.

He probably should have more expensive loyalty abilities, his white bonus is too high, I'm sure there are other things.

Easiest nerf would be to generate 1 kitty token instead of 2.

jtwood

Janen said:

How right you were, jtwood!  I feel I have to use the standard PMA Ajani deck with Ollenbock and the usual suspects just to have a chance, but I won't do it!

To the devs: could you consider nerfing PMA Ajani a bit?  It feels 50% of matches in any event regardless of event goals are PMA Ajani with Ollenbock, armament master, usually hixus and nix, rainbow bridge, etc.  It gets old real fast.

He probably should have more expensive loyalty abilities, his white bonus is too high, I'm sure there are other things.

Funny story: I didn't face a single PMA Ajani over the course of the entire event. Crazy

I still think this event will eventually just be a mass of people running him on both nodes.

Magic:PQ Support Team

Hello everyone,

I have sent your feedback about the Ajani, Invigorate Leadership planeswalker to the development team, they are aware of the situation and are already working to find a better alternative to resolve this issue.

As soon as I have more information about any changes with Ajani, Invigorate Leadership, I will let you know.

Rebeca

BongoTheGrey

THANK YOU! Looking forward to the better alternative to resolve this issue 

ArielSira

Taking away the passive lifegain at the end of his turn would have my vote. Maybe even in combination with only 1 kitten token, like Timewarp said.

Janosik

IMO the worst thing about the long games you play against PMA Ajani is how bogged down the board gets. Every gem ends up converted to a support and it becomes extraordinarily difficult to tell which ones are having which effect on the game. Currently, the only option to speed up the game is the Card Visual Aid option in Settings, but using this actually makes the problem worse, since each support that Ajani plays is not shown to you at the time.