Arlinn... Buff Her

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  • wereotter
    wereotter Posts: 2,064 Chairperson of the Boards
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    This again?


    I'm not opposed to a "buff" to Arlinn, but I don't think she needs a buff so much as just a tweak to her abilities. Expand her abilities to say "wolves or werewolves" and you've gotten most of the way there. Also let her use her third ability to transform and start making tokens without having creatures on the field and I think that's really all she needs to at least be mildly more relevant. There aren't many wolves for standard decks right now, but you can at least use the abilities, and wolves are a more frequently appearing creature type than werewolves are.

    As far as other planeswalkers, vehicles are confirmed as of today to be in Ixalan, so Saheeli's third ability will still be usable in the future, and vehicles have been confirmed to be a creature type that will return in sets after Ixalan.

    Energized gems could theoretically be repurposed into later mechanics, so I'm not 100% certain we'll see a completely obsolescence of that part of other planeswalker abilities, leaving ally Gideon as the only one who really doesn't have set synergy anymore, but at least he will have the ability to create ally tokens on his own.
  • hawkyh1
    hawkyh1 Posts: 780 Critical Contributor
    edited August 2017
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    MTG_Mage said:
    Any PW that uses has abilities that rely on block specific mechanics (such as energy) or a specific creature type, will lose usefulness over time. There are several that PWs that this affects. They are all still usable, its just at most one of their 3 abilities are useless and the other 2 rely on each other, which of course greatly reduces the power of the PW since there is no card interaction. In the case of Arlinn, 5 of her 6 abilities rely on werewolves.

    Arlinn should just have her middle two abilities switch from her human and werewolf sides.
    That way she generates werewolf tokens and can flip using loyalty (assuming both her 3rd abilities still flip her if no werewolves are in play).
    It makes her comparable to Gideon Ally of Zendikar.

    3 of her 6 abilities rely on having at least one
    werewolf card in the deck/battlefield. (flip side
    ability 1 works fine buffing wolves)
    if her default side 3rd ability worked on a wider
    range of creatures she can flip to get access to
    her werewolf token.

    HH
  • TheDragonHermit
    TheDragonHermit Posts: 465 Mover and Shaker
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    wereotter said:
    This again?


    I'm not opposed to a "buff" to Arlinn, but I don't think she needs a buff so much as just a tweak to her abilities. Expand her abilities to say "wolves or werewolves" and you've gotten most of the way there. Also let her use her third ability to transform and start making tokens without having creatures on the field and I think that's really all she needs to at least be mildly more relevant. There aren't many wolves for standard decks right now, but you can at least use the abilities, and wolves are a more frequently appearing creature type than werewolves are.

    As far as other planeswalkers, vehicles are confirmed as of today to be in Ixalan, so Saheeli's third ability will still be usable in the future, and vehicles have been confirmed to be a creature type that will return in sets after Ixalan.

    Energized gems could theoretically be repurposed into later mechanics, so I'm not 100% certain we'll see a completely obsolescence of that part of other planeswalker abilities, leaving ally Gideon as the only one who really doesn't have set synergy anymore, but at least he will have the ability to create ally tokens on his own.
    I was trying to play off the Koth discussion. I am really hoping for adjustments, just slightly.
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
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    MTG_Mage said:
    Any PW that uses has abilities that rely on block specific mechanics (such as energy) or a specific creature type, will lose usefulness over time. There are several that PWs that this affects. They are all still usable, its just at most one of their 3 abilities are useless and the other 2 rely on each other, which of course greatly reduces the power of the PW since there is no card interaction. In the case of Arlinn, 5 of her 6 abilities rely on werewolves.

    Arlinn should just have her middle two abilities switch from her human and werewolf sides.
    That way she generates werewolf tokens and can flip using loyalty (assuming both her 3rd abilities still flip her if no werewolves are in play).
    It makes her comparable to Gideon Ally of Zendikar.

    This option would work too and would be quick and easy for the developers to do.

    So this or change things to "Wolf or werewolf" would both work fine.

  • arNero
    arNero Posts: 358 Mover and Shaker
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    I've said this in another thread, but allow me to repeat.

    My personal suggestion to fix/buff Arlinn is that her ultimate on both forms should be allowed to buff ALL your creatures, not just Werewolves. The reason is mostly because her flip side has one ability that can be used even if you don't run Werewolves (the token generator), so if at least she can gain access to that regardless of what deck she plays, it would be great. Her werewolf tutor and werewolf flip abilities can remain as is even if unusable.
  • Gilesclone
    Gilesclone Posts: 735 Critical Contributor
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    Just allowing her 3rd on the human side to flip her without werewolves would be enough. 
  • fiirst
    fiirst Posts: 438 Mover and Shaker
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    Just remove all werewolf restricrion as alternative would be good

  • Monkeynutts
    Monkeynutts Posts: 566 Critical Contributor
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    To make Arlin more playable they need to lower her ability cost. Espeically her flip ones.
    Next id make red and green +4's like Saheeli.
    Her 2nd ability can be like Kioras and not specific. Or simply next wolf, werewolf or human. Humans is still a thing and may make her more appealing
  • Sirchombli
    Sirchombli Posts: 322 Mover and Shaker
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    I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you don't play paper. Rotations happen. Cards go out of print. Example I use. I played in a lot of ptqs during the alara/zendikar/m10 standard. I was the equivalent to a whale, so I had all the toys. Then standard rotated and my formerly 50 dollar mythics became 5 dollar mythics. They still worked and were still sweet cards. Just couldn't use them in standard. 

    The same can be said of arlinn. She's not faulty, she was just affected by the rotation. It's the nature of the game. N3 is gonna get a little weird when akh and hou rotate. A2 is going to have some borderline unusable abilities when the kld block rotates. Saheeli is lucky because there are vehicles in ixalan, but otherwise she would effectively have 1 ability. None of the akh block pws aside from N3 will really get weird. I think that was by design.

    Standard felt like it was implemented to stem the bleeding from the ridiculous mythics in the previous sets. Everybody has been on the receiving end of a 100+ damage kothlivia cascade. Being that those cards are essentially unobtainable for new players, something had to give. Being a scrub in the pigliviarich era was rough. Games were super swingy. It sucks that arlinn became awkward after the rotation, but that's how rotations go sometimes. Just ride the wave. All raging to d3 is going to do is raise your blood pressure. 
  • TheDragonHermit
    TheDragonHermit Posts: 465 Mover and Shaker
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    As you pointed out, the abilities of Walkers that came out after standard seem to have been designed to work with the set they are from but not be anchored to it so they won't be hindered by a set rotations out, this suggests the possibility they are not trying for forced obsolescence and Arlinn was an oversight. I am just hoping that one of the things on the new studio's plates is a standard overhaul, to keep Walkers that need an adjustment, within their theme, but makes them still competitive. People will still buy new walkers that fit the set, and they will likely have a leg up for a while, but making Walkers simply clutter on a screen seem short sighted.
  • ElfNeedsFood
    ElfNeedsFood Posts: 944 Critical Contributor
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    Cards are made obsolete by the new rotation rules. Planeswalkers are made obscolete when new Planeswalkers are issued that are more powerful or more relevant to the current meta. I think N3 will feel dated in 9-12 months, for example.  There was a lot of G3 decks out there until they became Elspeth decks. Now it's Samut's turn to take the stage, much of that is at Arlinn's expense. 
  • Kinesia
    Kinesia Posts: 1,621 Chairperson of the Boards
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    While Planeswalkers will be more or less relevant at times I don't think it's a good plan to _design_ them with that in mind. They aren't the same kind of thing as cards.

    The thing is that rotations come from the source game and have a deliberate purpose.

    The planeswalkers are _inspired_ by things in the source game but parts are very very invented just for this and they are still obviously learning what works and what doesn't. They have not yet completely understood that Paper Magic _stopped_ escalating cards because it was bad for the game long term. They have not completely understood that they are better off encouraging longevity in most things. (Standard does not go against this though it looks like it on the surface.)

    There are a lot of parts of this game that are additions to the Paper game and they have not yet had the years of development and testing, the finely tweaked "rules of design" developed yet.

    All these planeswalkers are works in progress, not finalised pieces of art.

    Suggesting fixes that improve things but keep the intent and, more importantly, mood is in the games best interest. There's no point "just disagreeing", you don't actually gain a single thing from keeping the status quo.

    There are older cards that need adjusting and older planeswalkers and that is _fine_ because our playing up until now has been the development testing that paper magic usually has prior to release (even then it needs errata but far less than it used to.)



  • ElfNeedsFood
    ElfNeedsFood Posts: 944 Critical Contributor
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    I'm just pointing out that D3 does better when everyone needs the new stuff. It's now automatic with cards and is about power creep with walkers. 

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