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So then wouldn’t the scion spells be unbalanced? You dont balance the game by adding overpowered spells or giving one school more utility than others.

Alex, you are completely ignoring the existence of scion (I know you said you aren’t familiar with visionary), but scion is insanely good for the three schools you didn’t mention, Death, Myth, and Storm. Myth has the easiest possible activation for double damage scion, just cast stun shield twice, and then you can one shot literally everyone. Shields won’t matter when you’re in shrike. Death has an easy to activate double damage as well, you can even use Juju to negate hits from your opponent and get yourself into the 33% health threshold to get the double damage bonus. Storm also has a very easy to activate double damage bonus. If someone lacks a blade they’re dead period. You can make an argument that you can play differently to avoid storm and death scion. And you’d be right (most of the time) as long as death doesn’t have juju. However by the mere existence of scion you’re forced to play unoptimally or face scion. Most people are not going to run spirit or elemental blade, because it’s a waste of a sideboard/deck slot, and you waste a round and a pip for a blade that is weaker than a lot of schools’ natural blade. But because of storm scion merely existing you have to run that and use it. With death you pretty much have to one shot them.

The only school that can really be argued to be “way beyond” the other schools is balance. This is because mana burn is insanely op and can stop everyone from ever getting the pips to scion. But even this can be argued against because balance completely lacks the tools to one shot people. Instead balance is super predictable and always tries to chip people out and control the game. If you just outchip them or break their control you win because they’re so predictable.

Overall, pvp at max is some of the most balanced pvp there’s ever been. Every school has the tools to compete at a high level and counter different spells (too many to list here so I just emphasized the strengths of the schools you neglected). I think it is definitely fair of John to say that those who complain about spells just don’t know how to pvp, because all the counters exist. If people can’t utilize them that’s on them.