Can Magic The Gathering Teach us About Balance in Diablo 4?

[@MacroBioBoi]

A mechanic was miscommunicated and rightfully called out: Dredge replaced the single draw, and does not allow you Dredge and fail to return the card to hand. I meant to show that by Dredging, you can kick more cards with Dredge to the graveyard, which can ultimately fill it enough to trivialize Delve costs. It doesn't change the message of the video, but I do stand corrected.

[@diogovaladares2196]

Im D4 fan and also admire your work! Playing at Magic Fest Las Vegas today!!

[@MacroBioBoi]

@@diogovaladares2196 aye! Say hi to Kibler for me. What're you running?/events you're playing in?

[@diogovaladares2196]

@@MacroBioBoi I played the Mysterious event and went 2-1. We did play testing for potential new cards! It was fun! I’m checking the spoilers, trading stuff and playing commander from now on.

[@corinthiansmelcer7699]

The comparison is next level here. Well done. I actually thought about this last season. I played a bone spirit and then a blood surge they were both overpower builds and it got me thinking. I am glad someone else out there feels the same way I do. Thanks for the video.

[@Chomp96]

yeah, i agree, and the funny part is that the skills that were designed to overpower, are actually not the best to benefit from it, becouse were designed in a way to not be that much strong be able to overpower consistently, the problem is when a non overpower skill can reach the overpower status more frequentily compated to the ones that was designed for it, and these skills usually don't are designed to be spammable skill that can overpower. On top of this add the fact that with the season 6 they have completly mess up with the additive damage of the overpower to the super low base health, and that's it, if your build can't overpower you can't go that much far, and sometimes can be worth also overpower only every 10/12 second just becouse it's that much stronger compared to not doing it

[@yepter807]

I think this sort of relates to the old blighted aspect. The whole idea was if you could proc blighted, you would. Similarily with how if you could make something overpower, you would.

[@subzero308]

i love MTG i only play modern but macro talking about MTG and hes a necro main.. this man knows whats up.

[@TheStephenation]

A distinction with this analogy is that WotC has some significant pressure to avoid using card errata to fundamentally change a card. That's not to say that it's an unbreakable rule, but they started reverting "power level errata" back in 2006 and have rightly maintained this approach ever since. If Magic were more analogous to Diablo IV, then they could try pulling various levers to fine-tune a card like Treasure Cruise. They might add a second blue pip to the cost or increase the overall cost. They might lower the number of cards drawn to just 2, or perhaps change one of the draws to be a "loot" instead. Magic isn't as granular as most newer video games, but there are various ways to nerf a card. Because of the guiding principle that cards should ideally follow what their printed text says, those options aren't really on the table. In Legacy and other formats, the answer was simply to ban treasure cruise. Notably, WotC have had to make some exceptions to this principle, such as when they adjusted the entire "Companion" mechanic, causing the printed text on the original companion cards to be outdated, or when they had to add the word "another" to the rules text of Hostage Taker because they neglected to do so and failed to catch the mistake until it was too late. But in general, fine-tuning an individual card to weaken it through errata is no longer a valid tool in Magic. If Corpse Explosion in Diablo II was like Time Walk, so powerful that it warped gameplay around itself, then maybe the Diablo IV version could be more like Time Warp. But instead of stopping there, Blizzard kept adding more errata over time, to the point that Corpse Explosion stopped being viable.

[@MacroBioBoi]

The tools and approaches each game has, due to its medium, absolutely changes the outcomes here. Where in likening "ban/restricted" to nerfing into irrelevance. A thing that's happened both with Corpse Explosion and Bone Spear. And when they buff/change these skills to be relevant I'm likening to printing new and more restricted versions of an old powerful card. The outcome is the same, if it can be broken, it will be. But that's not always a bad thing. But you're absolutely correct.

[@lughor82]

I think Diablo 4 goes into a dangerous direction. We have dot damage that cannot crit but is easily stackable. Crit damage became the meta and every build got to 100 % crit chance easily. Heir or Perdition is one of the mythical items that is destroying the game by making a headpiece a damage multiplier, a way to guarantied crit and giving lucky hit and movement speed. Banish Lord Talisman is doing similar things for overpower builds. We are getting to the point where we only think about making crit + overpower possible with a few items and all other items are damage multipliers. That is terrible game design, because build variety is getting destroyed this way. The fun aspects of a necromancer like cursed aura, void and coldbringers are meaningless. If you are using it, it will make your builds weaker. A few seasons ago, when there was no endgame to use max damage builds, this wasn't that important, but now, with Torment 1 to 4 and Pit levels, its all about max damage and not how much fun a build is.

[@luminaxar]

Let's see if I can articulate my thoughts on balance well enough. Come Season 4: I find the Andariel Rogue: I need the helmet, I take all the DoT and poison boosts, I need to have stuff to up my lucky hit as much as possible which also allows me to apply crowd controls non-stop - so I also take all the extra CC damage I can get as well. It was pretty straight forward and specialized. Come Season 5: It's all about the overtuned temper "damage per dark shroud" for every Rogue build. Come Season 6: I need some damage per dark shroud, I need a ton of lucky hit for some CC, I need the new helmet because 60%x, I need some ultimate damage, I need some chance to do poison damage to proc a passive, I need aspects that increase stun grenade damage because my skill got that tag to it.. I guess what I'm trying to say is, it sucks that everything seems to change every time they add something new. It's a huge turn off when considering to get into making my very own builds. I'd much rather enjoy picking an item with a cool effect or a fun skill and then figure how to scale it (like the Season 4 Rogue I mentioned above), instead of just trying to checkbox every multiplier I can and spreading really wide across all the buckets instead of just specializing.

[@seanplays16]

the balance issue this season isnt more about developer creativeness but rather a corporate command. blizzard wants voh sales

[@okay.conflik]

💯

[@hunterstrong3318]

This brings back up dot damage. While sone classes have been given tools to "crit" the dot damage such as barbs key passive or wither on necro, its still unable to over power or increase the speed of the dps, leaving it.... somewhere

[@MacroBioBoi]

Somewhere indeed

[@emptysoul2757]

And this somewhere is an awful, awful place..

[@chaddrusso8850]

Barb had great bleed builds in season 4 but they completely gutted them at the start of season 5

[@b4ll0w]

100% agree about the OP singularity, also i started with a sorc this season and made it to paragon220 and pit 93 with almost perfect gear only missing a decent necklace but then switched around decided to try spiritborn. Literally when i hit 60 i slapped the BiS gear without any optimization what so ever, not a single rune upgraded, missing 3 mystic circle tempers cause i hadn't picked it up. I did Pit 95, 100, 105 and 110 first try in 5'ish min every run. C'mon..

[@johnferrell1962]

I may be ignorant but I think the simpler problem is that the took away the other damage multiplies after season 2 if remember and it made us chase ever we can get it. After we realized over power will scale wildly with health and crit it was all she wrong. I personally liked chasing vulnerable and crit.

[@feveraxavier9851]

Good parallel!

[@whateverthemeta]

It is same story within local scope of specs, like Cruors&Blood Moon or Mendeln or Ebonpiercer... It is always the same - borrowed power, shortcuts, something you can't claim to be earned honestly during your character progression. Even before uniques becoming oppressive to the limits since S5, it was aspects before, which is same power source focal point... I still believe that S4 itemization rework was utter failure, not solving most of the problems it was meant to. Sources of power should be distributed and fragmented as much as possible among the systems and lion share of that should be what has the most steps to progress - core stats of the gear, paragon.

[@matheusmterra]

I have no question in my mind that they will nerf Overpower in such a way that builds like Blood Surge and Blood Lance that rely on Overpower damage will be significantly weaker, unfortunately the team has shown to us that they can't thread that needle. Exhibit 1: The Bonk barbarian. Way back in Season 3, Hammer of the Ancients was abusing the massive 120% multiplier on Banished Lord alongside many other multipliers, including the very powerful Dominate glyph that gave over 3000% additive damage to Overpower (additive damage isn't that impactful, unless it's 3000% or more). The next season, in order to balance the Barbarian, Banished Lord's Talisman got gutted in half, had the Essence requirement higher and the Dominate glyph was absolutely neutered, and not a single compensation buff was made to the Necromancer's Blood builds. So I have no question in my mind that in the next season, Overpower might get reworked entirely, Banished Lord's Talisman will get nerfed to a point in which you physically can't reach the maximum essence required to Overpower in every cast or even every other cast (my money is on "After spending 800 primary resource", in the same vein as the runeword requiring 800 tribute, and the damage multiplier will get reduced to 40% maybe. Additionally they will rework the scaling of Overpower to instead of taking into account how much higher your Max life is over your Base Life, they will just make it so that if you are max life, that's a 100% multiplier, if you're fortified and max life that's another 50%, and the value of your max life won't matter so to not make it scale way over the edge given the big discrepancy between currently Base life of 400 and Max life values of over 15,000. In Season 8 they might directly buff the builds that got neutered though, but I'm not looking forward to seeing those patch notes being the Blood Lance enjoyer I am.

[@Chomp96]

more that increase the resource to reach, i would do something like, let's stay with 275 resource, but the effect can occure only every X second, maybe every 2/3 seconds, and so you don't limit much the build that at now already can't overpower with the banished lord talisman every single hit, and return to the original overpower idea, that it's something that should happen sometimes, if you set a number, as 800, stay sure that some build, the already top one that benefit the most from Banished, will reach this goal in just 2/3 hits, and so probably are going to overpower still every second, making some builds like blood lance and blood surge overpowering less frequent compared to them

[@matheusmterra]

@@Chomp96 then they'll add the two effects, put the cost to 800 and make it so the effect can't be triggered more than once every 5 seconds, kinda life Rathma's Chosen. They already nerfed Banished Lord once, I am positive they'll go nuclear on it now, Warsong Commander style.

[@Chomp96]

@@matheusmterra at that point just delete that item xD Its hard to find a balanced way, but the main problem are the build that can overpower every single hit, and can attack 3/4 times per second, if they can overpower only one time every 3 seconds, and so one time every 9/12 attacks, the damage will be already put a lot down, and so the nerf should affect more the top abuser skills, and not to much the others, but I know that balance this is hard

[@matheusmterra]

@@Chomp96 the counterpoint to delete the item is that it makes the item pool for unique amulets smaller, and they don't like messing with their drop rates.

[@aarontrudel9947]

Unrelated to your point but somewhat relevant: The Spiritborn feels like a D&D character. I mean a WoTC designed character, not the typical fantasy tropes already shared between D&D and Diablo. I don't know quite how to describe it though, it's more of a vibe thing.

[@aarontrudel9947]

Overpower and Lucky Hit were both attempts at avoiding the OG singularity of the genre that is critical hits. I don't remember the exact wording but the devs said they wanted to avoid the "crit problem" with both of those designs. While I'm still not entirely a fan of Lucky Hit, I feel like they actually hit the mark with that one. Still think it's a bit convoluted but once you understand it, it's not so bad. Overpower is just crit on steroids. Which I don't even hate the idea of outright. Some of the hoops they make you jump through have been fine but Banished Lords Talisman breaks the pattern of the restriction being kills or time gated. Nesekem is a mythic and only gives you guarantee on one mob, for 10 hits, every 5 seconds. Banished Lord's Talisman should just add "(this can only happen every 5 or whatever seconds)". That would bring it in line with pretty much all the other overpower granting abilities. Honestly I thought/assumed Banished Lord's Talisman was a Necro unique for awhile. Probably should have been. That or Rod of Kepeleke should not have been class-locked lol

[@keithweide3452]

I’d like to leave a more in depth comment but it’s easier stated that I completely agree with you

[@bas_6983]

Great point! One key difference between MTG and D4, is that MTG is inherently pvp :) which makes the issue much larger in MTG than in D4. A question: With the ease with which people can look up builds online, players who do that won't be impacted by banished lords being present or not. they will just hop on the next best thing the collective community deems best. Players that create their own builds will either come to their own version of Overpower, or not. In the latter case, this only matters when they are measuring themselves against others in leaderboard or something (and I imagine that most players who do that, also look up build tech online). Really interested to hear your thoughts about this, as I imagine you considered this already!

[@MacroBioBoi]

This point kind of applies to everything. That casuals are not really impacted, if they merely follow meta. But the thing it ignores is when that same player becomes knowledgeable enough to know when a thing they enjoyed is no longer an option. So I think the population of "impacted" people is larger than we may assume at first glance.

[@bas_6983]

@@MacroBioBoi Thanks for taking the time to reply :)

[@rossmonasweebro]

Give BLT's effect a cooldown and it would most likely vanish from the meta. Guessing; 3s if you wanna kill it, 1s if you want to push it back into a niche.

[@PMKNK1NG]

OMG iv been wondering when someone was gonna bring this up thank you

[@Rahru]

That was an awesome video and reflection! Would you say that nerfing Banished Lord's itself (and maybe some other guaranteed overpower mechanics) is a viable option to help with the issue? Say, not grant a guaranteed overpower, but a higher-than-3% chance to overpower, like 30% or even 50%? (And then, if it kills overpower builds, maybe lower the resource requirement to activate the effect?)

[@MacroBioBoi]

The higher than 3% chance is the most interesting option to me.

[@njhudak]

I feel like I have been gaslighted on Recall being able to make your opponent draw the cards instead... I actually owned one for a brief time 15 some years ago and did not remember that.

[@truckntrav6941]

Welcome to D3.5. Where you play the new hotness & meta every season. No player agency has been an understatement for 12 years now in Diablo world. Welcome, welcome, Mac. Pull up a chair and grab a beer.

[@droid5785]

"welcome, welcome" bruh put the phone down and go grab some ink and a Quill lmao cringe

[@truckntrav6941]

@@droid5785 you got a problem "bruh"??

[@robertvictorgermano2145]

I knew it. I would be willing to wager any amount of money. It's pretty much every single person who loves making builds comes out of that same history.

[@BurgurBun]

I didn't expect you to discuss magic the gathering LOL

[@ChrisMcKenaCreative]

Man, just when I think you can’t get any cooler you go and drop this bomb 🤯… I wanna see how that spread sheet brain builds decks now. 🔥

[@MikeySassounian]

This was such a good video. Well done. And great point. I hate to agree with you as BLT made our beloved bone spirit. But I HAVE to agree.

[@rozacp]

More videos like this!

[@mounirassali3548]

in normal times you ought to be canceled for ruining fine combo decks with your delney double bat, but these are tumultuous times with the mono red invaders at our gates!

[@wukongmain2075]

At the end of the day it boils down to the fundamental barebone functionality of a given game being altered in an unnatural way. in MTG drawing 1 card per turn is at it's core the way you're meant to play the game.(obviously there are balanced ways to draw more), Drawing 3 cards takes this functionality and splits in it's face thereby breaking the game. On Diablo 4 at launch, Overpower was this cool hard to come by damage instance that obliterated our enemies. Banish Lord's Talisman takes this functionality and spits in it's face letting people do it 100% of the time, thereby breaking the game. The problem is a simple one. First a core mechanic is created and balanced. Drawing limited cards/overpowering sometimes and THEN another mechanic is created in the future that does not respect the core mechanic's logic, reasoning and balancing.

[@andrewp979]

I think this was a great analogy. And also think that BLT is problematic in its current design. Side question, do you still play MtG? Do you play MtG commander? One thing I've noticed in that format, is that it suffers from a bit of an identity crisis. People generally try to optimise their decks for power, but in edh they also tend to want to cultivate play experiences that they like. But people are pretty bad at this. And I find that there is a severe lack of content around optimising for fun/play experience. It usually just boils down to 'play multilayer gimmick cards' like voting cards, etc. Long story short, I think that if you were into casual edh, you'd do a great job of articulating actual methods of optimising a deck for fun, rather than power. So if you have an mtg channel or ever made one, is definitely listen!

[@MacroBioBoi]

I still play a fair amount of mtg, almost exclusively edh. I have too many decks, but my current project is a cedh Breya Etherium Sculptor. My issue being that I get bored with efficient combos fairly quick xD.

[@andrewp979]

@@MacroBioBoi awesome! It's the only format I really play these days. But it's such a fun way to play magic! If you ever felt like it, I would definitely tune in to listen to you talk commander. You're absolutely excellent at formulating builds, but also at breaking things down and communicating with others. Do you play exclusively cedh, or do you play 'casual' as well?

[@hunterstrong3318]

Ooohhh i like this thumbnail

[@Saiperia]

yeh not only over power should have been a lucky thing that may happens necro and spiritborn just get it for free every hit also the damage scaling of if trough hp and fortification/ shild is kinda broken after the expansion stat squelsh... my necro has 15k hp and gets around 13k increased overpower damage from it wtf^^

[@Chuckatu_ttv]

Hey guys. POE 2 will be out soon. Don’t worry. Diablo will be fixed when D5 drops cause they were blown out the water by GGG.

[@MacroBioBoi]

Excited for POE2 but this weird tribalism really turns me off from the community. On both sides but I swear any time there's a critique of Diablo, inevitably POE needs to be brought up as if the majority of arpg players don't just play multiple games.

[@Johnnybsknees]

I just hope d4 never has a 19 set season 🙏

[@verushistorie]

I summon ! Wait wrong game

[@jeffreylevin9728]

The problem with diablo 4 is now the same problem as pretty much every other game. The best two stats for all S and A tier builds are crit chance and damage. I mean, blizzard should just make it easier and the only two stats on gear should be crit chance and crit damage. The only skills modifiers should be crit chance and crit damage and all paragon nodes should just be crit chance and crit damage. Its basically why now, i have stopped playing.

[@Necronlord54]

Hail New Phyrexia

[@I_PYRO_I]

Haha magic the gathering... I tried to forget this game. I bought lotus. Lotus is worth 20k $$$. Please dont blame me.

[@Not____Applicable]

It would be incredibly foolish to just nerf overpower to the ground when we had this same problem before with crit strike and vuln before season 3. People are crying about spiritborn so much before the season is even close to finishing. This community is so ridiculous.

[@MacroBioBoi]

Second wild energy comment. I don't say the word spiritborn in this video, once.

[@MK-dq1bt]

Typical blizzard fashion they never ever in the history of any of their games maintain all classes at the same balanced power level. It's a science really. Always keep one mechanic or class etc above the rest is a recipe for success. Keeps the masses guessing and the herds playing. It's cute you think they are actually trying to balance their game. If they wanted to it could be balanced in once patch.

[@Big_Appa-]

This comparison is wild. I play cedh, I do not agree with what you’re saying here

[@MacroBioBoi]

Which part of it is disagreeable?

[@Not____Applicable]

Why bring up the comparison of hipsters not being able to enjoy something when that has nothing to do with the fact that overpower is just used by spiritborn now too? That’s really the whole reason why this problem exists. Overpower was always good primarily for necromancers. Not many people play necro and complain about it. Now the new class everyone playing uses overpower too and everyone is complaining about it. That’s really all that’s going on. No need to try to make it seem like it’s on the fault of the people who play and build a spiritborn around banished lords talisman.

[@MacroBioBoi]

That's literally not the message of the video at all. I'm a bit confused how you walked away with that interpretation. The issue is the power of Overpower, and the ease of activating it for builds that otherwise shouldn't have access to it. And how this will negatively impact builds that naturally engage with the system, and how they may be disproportionately impacted by changes that will have to be made if the developers choose to balance around it rather than address the culprit, the systems themselves.

[@kahaneck]

Too many bad comparisons and oversimplifications... in mtg you have an opponent, someone to interact with. You could draw 3 for one mana, but thats USELESS if you were limited to playing one card a turn. In diablo your opponent is an npc, all it does is absorb damage and deal damage. Diablo has a problem with interactivity, not agency. You want more agency to do what? More damage? That does not change the gameplay in the slightest, only the planning of your character.

[@MacroBioBoi]

In magic the gathering all your opponent does is deal damage or a absorb damage. They may damage your life or you library size, but that's it. See how being reductive is non-conducive?

[@Haltedboy]

Dredge does not work like that. I get the analogy but it literally does not work that way, you replace the draw effect with one dredge effect of your choosing. At least try to learn the game...

[@MacroBioBoi]

Sorry the point I was trying to make was that by milling, you can get more cards with dredge I to your graveyard which can fuel dredge in the future. How I communicated wasn't correct. Edit: Took out the defensive bit, that's the pride talking.

[@TheStephenation]

If you have an effect that draws multiple cards (such as Treasure Cruise, which is the example in the video), then you can replace each card draw with one of your dredge abilities from a dredge card in your graveyard. So if Stinkweed Imp hits Golgari Grave-Troll off the first card draw you replaced, then you can replace the second one with dredging up the Troll, and so on. This is all a bit nuanced to potential viewers unfamiliar with Magic: the Gathering, and I'd think it's not too charitable to attribute some of the strange verbiage here to generalizations for that audience, rather than failing to grasp the fundamental rules for the mechanics he voluntarily incorporated into his analogy. I doubt that Mac literally thinks that Stinkweed Imp has the Cascade ability.

[@MacroBioBoi]

What I said was incorrect, I misremembered that the final verbiage of the trigger doesn't refer to a choice between returning the card and drawing a card, but instead refers to the dredge mechanic being the replacement of the base draw. Right to call me out, albeit in a douchey way. And no I don't think any of this refers to Cascade. It stands that by Dredging you can hit another dredge card and then trigger that with a future draw trigger, or choose to hit each draw of a multi draw spell differently, which is where my brain may have made the initial mistake.

[@Haltedboy]

@@TheStephenation Yes for each card draw you can choose to replace the draw with a dredge effect if you have any in the graveyard. I probably should have been a bit more specific lol. Not trying to cause problems, MTG has been a big part of my life as has Diablo and Blizzard games in general. I just wanted to clarify the ruling for anyone not as versed in the game.

[@Haltedboy]

@@MacroBioBoi Wasn't trying to come off "douchey" but that tells me a lot about what I missed in the comments when I went about my day. I've had many issues with maxroll personnel behind the scenes in the past week. All I've been trying to do was help with info. It's bad enough someone came to a friends stream then ran off with my nade tech to m1py like they discovered it. I had this issue in the past as well in D3 when the necro was being tested, remember Inarius corpse lance? I even commented on Rhykker's video about it back then and had my words twisted in a way that they seemed to believe someone else came up with it when I personally topped the leaderboard with the build on the PTR. Went to sleep and woke up with everyone running my build and someone else getting the credit. I'm getting so sick of this community as a whole and I'm about to start keeping my discoveries to myself entirely other than bug reports.

[@derekbridgerii2102]

Yes. Stop pumping out content without proper testing with new mechanics that just convolute everything. Too much is too much.