Balance Update: Plague

It’s time to go over August’s balance patch for Plague. This is likely going to be the last patch of the cycle for the set, as we think we landed in a good spot with a lot of the last changes. This one is more trying up some loose (but pronounced) ends.

This is a long post, and we think you deserve an explanation behind our thinking when it comes to these types of changes that have been lacking in the past. Our hope is that by bringing you in a little closer to our thinking, it will help you understand the changes we have made.

Changes

Ink-Stained Fingers - Lowered drain to 1

Fingers has proven to still be a little over the line. I want to emphasize that the last change to it was really what moved the needle on this card, this is just a push over the finish line. Not being perpetual is a big difference.

The purpose of this card is to give you benefits, but in a delayed manner. If you delay too long to gain that benefit, there are additional consequences in the form of stunted mana development. If you land an ink-stained and have it stick for 2 additional turns, it will draw you 2 cards for a net gain of +1 card, and drain a total of 4.

Now a spell that did all that for 2 mana would obviously be incredibly over the line power wise. Death has access to Dangerous Ritual and that is a card neutral, symmetrical damage card, and it sees plenty of play. Because the benefits are delayed, it gives your opponent time to react with relic removal, or to just kill you outright because you did not interact with the board. It also has the knock on downside that all relics have to some extent, in that you can only have one at any given time so it will prevent you from using other relics well, including powerhouses like Necroscepter and Skull Scepter.

So in addressing the issue, we have basically 4 paths we can go down to change the card. Mana cost, Durability, Number of drawn cards, and drain.

Changing the mana cost felt like a non-starter to us. Besides the fact that it narrows the window of when you can play it, meaning it is more likely that a player will hit the mana gem penalty, it simply would no longer be good enough at 3 mana. There are a number of cards in the game now that draw or generate +1 card advantage for 1 to 2 mana like Dark Skies, Vivid Imagination, Rally the Band, and basically any creature that draws or generates when played like Draka Miner. Some of them have potential to draw even more cards or provide other upside, and none of them take up your relic slot. Drawing the cards the same turn is also very powerful, as it can often get you out of a losing situation as a top decked card, whereas Ink-Stained off the rip when you do not have another turn is game over. So mana cost is out.

As an aside and because I mentioned it, the original version of Dark Skies during testing was 1 mana. It was changed VERY quickly. The challenge with a lot of cards and mana costing as a balance lever is simply that mana cost has to be in full increments, and often 1 more mana makes the card basically unplayable, and 1 less makes it insanely good. This is especially true with naturally lower cost cards. 1 mana 2/2 creature is serviceable in some decks if it has other synergies, whereas a 0 mana 2/2 has the potential to be utterly game breaking. This is often why we have to embed other restrictions or costs into the cards, like making it a relic instead of a spell or in Dark Skies case, costing life. I say this because while Ink-Stained as it is printed is a bit too good at 2 and terrible at 3, it would be probably just fine at 2.5, if there was such a thing. You’ll see with a lot of the balance decisions we make the lack of incrementation often causes us to have to be a little more creative with our balance.

Next is durability, but really we cannot talk about that without talking about the draw as well since they are linked. Ink-Stained’s durability represents the number of charges you get out of the card. This is not a new feature in GU, as anyone who has used the champion weapon cycle will be familiar, but we thought it was safe to tie these 2 together since death does not have access to durability buffs. Since draws have to happen in whole increments just like mana cost, nor can we change the number of draws without changing the durability, it would have to go to 1 or 3. At 3 durability but with a higher cost, the relic felt even more powerful since a 3 mana draw 3 that is more resistant to relic removal provides too much benefit overall. At 1 mana and one durability, again, the card would be rather bad compared to other options.

Reducing the drains to 1 felt like the most equitable solution. You still get some minor benefit other than the draw to justify the delayed resolution, vulnerability to removal, and competitive costing with other options. It is clearly worse than what it was, but it is still fundamentally the same card.

Part of the balance challenge with this card specifically is also the critical mass of direct damage that Death has access to. We feel that having damage that can go straight to the opponents dome is a reasonable thing to have in some quantity, and healthy for the game. There needs to be ways to go over the top of defenders, and if not for some burn options it has been shown in other games that the variety of decks suffer. While Death’s direct damage is generally nowhere near the quality as Magic’s, which are not symmetrical, they are cheap and plentiful. Most would not be an issue on their own, but when combined it lowers the safety threshold of 30 starting life. It’s hard for Magic to do more than 10 from hand on an empty board, and that requires 7 mana for Wyrmbreath and Pyrrich Knowledge, where as Death can often string together Dangerous Ritual, Brimstone, and Ragnarok for huge turns where an opponent can go from 15 to 0 in the blink of an eye. Again some level of this is healthy, but having it be a dominant strategy is not fun. Fingers contributes to that, so we are going to cut how much it does so in half.

We still feel confident that this card is good and will see play, but also that it will be more inline with player expectations on how good a 2 drop should be and not exclusionary of other relic options.

Purifying Flames - Lowered damage to 4

This is another card we nerfed last patch that still seemed a little over the line. We think the ability to burn-bliterate cards to prevent Afterlife and recursion is important, and as a 1 for 1 removal card it would be very hard to justify going much lower than 4 damage. Starshard bolt is already the standard for 2 mana burn removal, and it has not been an issue balance wise for ages. If we increase the mana cost by 1, it is reasonable to assume it would be a stronger effect, and we feel that the obliterate and minor life gain is worth 1 mana and certainly not 2.

Our gameplay data has shown that the lifegain, while minor, is relevant for the cards function, so removing it really makes the card both boring and much worse. The lifegain was in part a flavor ability, meant to combine with Pallas’ heal boost ability. At 2 it often felt like a bit too much, fully undoing damage an early attacker may have done, but at 1 it is minor enough that we think it’s in line with the cost and maintains the flavor of the card.

The obliterate is very useful against some very specific lists, but the targets in those lists are also almost always 3 or less health naturally. The venn diagram of cards that are 5 health, have an afterlife, and see much play is very low. In most cases it would have been more efficient to include Coup de grâce in your list instead, and it would have prevented more damage in the long term than playing a 3 mana spell just to regain 1 and also give your opponent back health.

Lowering the damage felt like the natural conclusion. You are not getting wyrmbreath damage for 3 mana, and it leaves a few select threats on the board like Sern or Heliora that the Magic player will need to think of other ways to deal with. Frankly the practical difference between 4 and 5 health in the game overall is not as much as the delta between 3 and 4 and 5 and 6 because of how a lot of the creature strength and direct burn spells are designed, so if anything this will have the knock on effect of making a lower strength, higher health creature a little more attractive overall.

One Who Remembers - Lowered draws to 2, Lowered heals to 7, Lowered refresh to 5.

We suspect this change will strike up the most conversation. Know that this card was also the most controversial to change, as many of us felt as if it could stay as is and just be a powerful card. 7 mana cost generally buys you a lot of power.

One Who Remembers is an incredibly complex card with a lot of potential balance points, that not only does a lot, it asks a complex deck building question. Not being able to play duplicate creatures cards in a lot of decks is a huge ask, so we wanted to ensure the reward was suitable for such a sacrifice.

The original version of the card was basically a mid to late game reset, and cascaded very hard. If you could make it to turn 7, even without the manasurge, a huge dragon that drew cards and healed a third of your life was a huge board stabilizer. We had felt it was inline with other big 7 drops like Ember Oni and Hortuk, but it just wound up sitting at the nexus of being a bit too good at everything. It gave you a bigger body than both of them. It gave you comparable levels of healing to oni without relying on the board state and without itself having burn. It gave you more card advantage than Hortuk. It’s very hard to know what the right number is when there are so many variables as with OWR, but we know it was too much as it was. We feel like splitting the difference means it is still a good stabilizer, but not just the clear winner over other options.

The first half of the card has also empowered a deck that has not been viable in some time, Azaiah, Hands of the Spire, but maybe did it a touch too well. Azaiah is an incredibly cool card and a very unique deck that expands the meta, but OWR was covering up a lot of the inherent weakness of the deck itself a little too easily. 7 mana OWR is good, 6 mana is really strong. Azaiah will get more options every set from here to the end of time, since legend is a card rarity we print every set, so we do keep an eye on it to make sure it does not get unreasonable, but we think this change won’t stop the inclusion or utility of the card to the point where the deck falls off the map.

Then there was the Manasurge. This was meant to support a handful of other cards that cannot naturally be surged by themselves, like The Great Finality and Swallow Whole. It is still able to empower those cards with a refresh of 5, but what it does not do now is enable turns where you can play it into other 7 mana powerhouses like Hortuk to basically reset your entire life total and drop a game ending, must answer army into play. We were worried when this was printed that it would push Arrandion over the line, but our internal testing and live play data has shown that Arrandion is nowhere near what it used to be and even with help from OWR it did not turn that card into a problem. There are just better things to do with your deck nowadays than play a 7 drop to power up an 8 drop that won’t hit for 2-3 turns that could still fail to close out the game.

At 5 refresh you are still getting a heck of a turn. OWR followed up with any number of 5 or less cards, or even just playing out some little stuff that you drew from it is still powerful and still maintains the intent of the card, so we felt this was the best point for the refresh.

Entangling Horde - Lowered health to 5

This one I think we can be a little more succinct with. Entangling horde could be played on turn 4 reasonably and be expected in a lot of cases to bring 2 more copies, and 1 copy is all but guaranteed. Since all the health is copied over, it was just a lot of very hard to deal with creatures all at once, well ahead of schedule. There is really no other card that can make that much on turn 4 with so little setup.

While there are some decks that can deal with 2-3 entangling hordes that early, the scarier proposition with him is going from an empty board to a full one with Mycelium Bloom and either Necronomics or Pack Stalk. 6 health that early puts the card solidly out or range of basically every available board wipe in the game, with many games being purely academic at that point until the Horde player wins. We didn’t love that dynamic, even if it was high variance because he was a legend. In our testing it was also not unreasonable to build a deck where he was the only Everborn, and then using either Emergence, My So Call Champion, or The Trial Begins to draw him and have a very high chance of playing the combo turn 4.

Dropping an army of 2/5’s as early as turn 4 is still awfully powerful in the right match ups, so we still think this card will compliment Everborn strategies well and be a key player, just not unreasonably so.

Sunbleached Gargoyles - Changed ability and stats to make it work as intended.

The stats on this card scared a lot of players, and that was by design. 6/8 for 5 is very over-scale, even for a draka (get it? SCALE). The issue was not actually the stats on this card, which some people were likely skeptical about, it was how they were applied.

Because of how the card was worded, the turn it came down it started with 6 power, which was really just a wall you could not penetrate without losing your entire board in most cases. The intent of the card was never meant to be this, but rather that it was a defensive card in nature that ‘activated’ on your turn when taking damage. We wanted this enrage style ability to only turn on when it was attacking, similar to a gargoyle becoming animate at night in mythology, for it to go back to it’s perch during the day to defend the Garrison. What wound up happening was that it became a monstrous defender every turn, and on it’s attack it became just some bonus damage.

In order to make this more in line with our intent, and to maybe tone down just how big a defender it is, we have change the stat line to 3/7 and the ability to the following:

“Flank. Frontline. Can’t attack.

At the start of your turn, if this creature is damaged, give it both +2 strength and lose can't attack until the end of the turn.”

Of note, we kept the Strength above 2 and the health above 7. The card is simply not going to be played if it can be easily mindbroken or turned into an acolyte. 7 health is a bit of a concession to Great Dragon Hunter, which a lot of decks have started to tech in to deal with these. Them being great Dragons and it hunting them is a nice thematic win as well as a balance win.

Pallas, Wise Beyond Years - Added the roar back

Many of you have told us we overnerfed Pallas, so we are listening. Truth be told the cards win rate did not go down much if at all in some formats, but the inclusion rate took a huge hit and we do not like to see that for our spotlight cards.

It is important that we keep Pallas at 6 cost, because it is still a very game winning card if left on the board for a turn, and that is not what we like to see in a 5 drop, at least not at the level this one overall is. It is also important that we maintain the Spell and Heal boost because the entire gameplay story around the card is how seriously Pallas considered their vow and its synergy with the cards it creates as well as purifying flame. Ward is also pretty much a given on one of the strongest magic users in the realm, as well as giving it some protection. 5 health is not exactly hard to remove at 6 mana, and Pallas was never intended as a pure control piece you can slam late game when people are out of options. We want people to play it around 6 mana and force an unprepared opponent to have to consider what it means if they don’t focus on it.

Adding back the roar at least provides some flexibility if Pallas gets removed early, and utility on the spot if it is a later play. We don’t feel comfortable buffing it much more than that considering our internal numbers around it’s winrates, but we think this will at least give Pallas back some of the feeling of being a spotlight champion.

Auric Rush - Changed ability

We have changed the second modal ability on auric rush, which now reads “Deal 2 damage randomly split among all enemy creatures.”

This one probably sticks out compared to the rest, being a classic core set card from the dawn of the game. Auric rush has come in and out of playability as the meta shifts, but it has always been ever present in the game, so we know this one may hit close to home for some players.

We are changing this for a few reasons, the most prominent being its role in carvings decks. Right now carvings have access to three different 1 damage area of effect damage spells, Bar Fight, Savage Strike, and this. On their own none of them are particularly notable, but the over abundance of these 1 mana spells has made it very difficult to maintain a board against carvings because of the reduction in variance the decks filtering naturally provides, as well as it being a tool to advance their game plan. By changing this card, it still maintains it’s utility in that deck as a removal piece, but will no longer trigger your tutor bears as an upside and will help slow the number of turns where you assemble the carving combo by turn 5. It’s a marginal change to be sure, but one that we felt had other upsides and helps us knock down the decks winrate a touch.

The other reason is just that the game has evolved so much over the years that the value of this card has only gone up. War did not have access to fracture in the early years, and being the most prominent GP has only compounded the strength of this card, being able to kill wider boards of various shapes and sizes more handy with the extra targeted point of damage. It can very often be a single card solution on turn one to a player who was able to drop a wide but otherwise boring board, such as deception dropping a Trapper and using a Bag of Tricks to drop a Contract Broker.

Part of the reason we also like this change is because it feels like there are a few decks where this was not being used where now it may actually feel more viable. It loses the self damage as well as the ability to go wide, but it also means a fair, creature based war deck can go wide itself and then consider this card as an option. The random nature of it also means it will provide less utility as the game draws on and boards get clogged, which is also desirable to us because the scaleability of a 1 mana core card really should be contained to some extent.

Overall we think this is a pretty minor change that people will adapt to pretty easily, so it eases our reluctance to change something as ubiquitous as this. We will continue to monitor how this one plays out overall, but we think it is a good move.

Have fun out there mortals. Things are ever changing and we look forward to some meta shakeups with these new changes.