@Kryptid
Maybe Cosmos was just taunting her enemies in hoping that they wouldn’t try it.

I’m actually rather intrigued by Discord’s statement: “I’ll just reattach it after–but I won’t have my magic until after, so maybe I won’t–” It sounds like he’s implying that decapitation can actually kill him when his magic is suppressed. I mean, that makes complete sense given that he’d logically need magic to fix his head, but that seems to contradict what Cosmos said in an earlier issue…

Even after Cosmos was de-powered, didn’t she say that she couldn’t be destroyed because she was the personification of malice? If Discord is the personification of chaos, you’d expect the same thing to apply to him. Which then raises the next question: how exactly could they avoid dying if they took lethal damage without their magic to heal them? Would the latent magic in nature itself revive them? Or perhaps more importantly, is this even considered canon? What about the comic with Cosmos in it?

@Phoenixflambe
More than complaining about the existence of anti-magic stuff, it’s more about how everbody casually have an anti-magic artifact that can null a friggin reality warper user meanwhile the fucking civilization that can control sun and moon don’t have that and neither with other species because it’s so regular the invasions from other species to don’t think to create efective anti-magic artifacts to stop anyone else.

And because nobody wants to explore more lore with those anti-magic stuff to make something interesting just makes questions like “why the changelings didn’t creates more anti magic stuff to make their invasions more effective?”

And then there’s also the cat collars, it’s the stupiest one for scenes like that page, why someone whith that collar should be affected by magic? make pointless the avoid any magic stuff because some rebel can actually free the prisioners with magic and it’s more ridiculous when it just needs a strong hit to destroy a melted collar.

So, at this point, you know for a fact Equestria is headed towards a future where all magic is gone and anti-unicorn/anti-pegasi devices are commonplace…yet you still show surprise at anti-magic devices showing up in the “present day” narrative?

@Jacalope
Oh yeah, why did anti-magic stuff exist in a world full of magic?

@Background Pony #BD5D
oh god, so many anti magic stuff, i can’t blame why the writers forgot Sombra’s anti-magic stuff, it’s just ridiculous everbody have anti-magic artifacts that don’t affect the villain’s magic, making rules of magic strange because the writers don’t care about how is different the type of magic despite it’s just a different color instead of giving interesting differences, limits and even philosophies from every type of magic.

If they have a more established rules of magic, everything will have sense and don’t need to be forced to forgot stuff to avoid being repetitive or being on an dead end or even can give an interesting backstory to those anti-magic artifacts instead of being just a lazy trick to create conflict.

@Background Pony #BD5D
Basically Discord has Kryptonite.

Except that Sombra did have a way to deal with him: those anti-magic, anti-teleport crystals. So the writers had to increase the Idiot Ball they already gave Sombra, and make him forget he could do anything but shoot lasers.
“Those wouldn’t have worked, either”? Every anti-magic source used on Discord (even a standard-issue collar, as seen here) has been successful, so it seems that anti-magic in general is a problem for him. Not to mention that those crystals were able to grow around the Tree despite its anti-Everfree field (which overpowered his Plunderseeds for centuries; they couldn’t grow, until it ran out), so we’ve seen them nullify magic stronger than his (and in both cases, the Elements were removed; so there were no mitigating circumstances).

@nightshroud96
So the villains have to play with different cards and think outside the box. Or simply have more presence of chaos magic (and being more about skills instead of power levels) as an antagonist that fits perfectly as an opponent of the elements of harmony.

@Jacalope
Kind of a problem if dark magic can’t hurt him since serious villains are most likely going to use some kind of magic like that and not something like goo.

@nightshroud96
Well, the writers forgot the sickness detail, somehthing that would be interesting about knowing why that creature makes sick Discord, maybe he can be hurted by things he don’t know its structure, explaining why he didn’t get hurt by black magic of Sombra but he got hurted with the creature’s goo.

@Jacalope
And yet Sombra’s attacks were shown to never harm Discord AT ALL. Sure confuses things even more.

Its a problem since the fact still remains, if he decides to not play around.

As for that point also adds to the problem on how OP his powers which can affect the story.

@nightshroud96
It’s not like if Three’s crown, Discordant Harmony and Issue 57 don’t show some limitations that don’t evolves magic drain like don’t having ideas, being killed if he tries to be normal and can be sick. And special emphasis in being sick because that means he isn’t invincible in a phisical form and can be hurted in different ways.

And you really underestimate too much the psychological limits of a character in terms of power, since in itself because of how Discord is, it really is very difficult for him to win in an instant without wanting to play and rely too much on it.

In fact, if you consider that “got overconfident” doesn’t count as a fight, then Celestia and Luna never defeated him fairly since he got overconfident.

@Jacalope
The problem still remains due to the possibility.
Like if a threat takes down Discord, its only due to they got lucky he didn’t use the “instant win” bit and not actually beating his powers legit.
It messes up the threat of the villain in question due to the fact if Discord intervenes, they are done for.

Sadly no showing of balancing his power in that crossover. As in he could have chosen to go “instant win”.
The problem is they didn’t explain the limits of his magic. If they properly established the drawbacks(instead of leaving it so vague), the problem wouldn’t be therre.

Unlike actual magic(which is tied to something, as in spells like teleporting), chaos magic is literally reality warping.
As in a snap of fingers, suddenly no powers for the opponent or your army is suddenly cheese now. No beam, just a snap of fingers and you instantly lose.

The problem being the villain’s threat is goofted up due to no matter what they do, they could instantly lose if Discord decides to do something. Sombra in season 9 is the prime example, he was literally doomed from the start even if he takes out the Mane 6(and this before the reveal that Discord set this up).

As for changeling magic, the guardians comic showed there is kind of limits of their shapeshifting ability.
And its implied they can’t copy the magical abilities of who they are impersonating. Only physical abilities like strength or mobility in water for example.
So they got some establishment on whats balancing their power out, Discord’s chaos magic got none.

@nightshroud96
Why it’s hard to understand Discord or any other reality warper actually can never win instantly? It’s like using cheat codes in a video game, it’s great to use some and effective in others, but no one is going to use all the codes to play, since it takes away the fun itself.
Also, if Discord helped in every instance, it would cause more problems around the world, Accord can answers that.

Meanwhile, the crossover with Transformers perfectly understood that, Discord is very active and they never took away his powers or being far away of the fight but Twilight and Optimus Prime were the ones who have resolved the conflict.

But in itself, rather than establishing limits with the magic of chaos, it is simply establishing magic in general, since in itself, the magic here is not established in a satisfactory way since in itself, MLP did not need it as it was a slice of life with fantasy, but when they add constant conflict, they never want to establish magic, it only exists because it is there.

Example, it’s really necessary the changeling magic? They could be non-magical beings that use biology for their processes as transformation and other stuff. And talking about them, i don’t see many people who really questions the limits of the changelings because they easily can transform into giant dinosaurs and destroy civilizations or transform into little creatures and make their moves.

You would say that they are villains, so, isn’t bad that they are really OP, but the stories makes them looking so stupid when they wants to be taken seriously.

The problem isn’t Discord, the problem is trying to be epic in a world that isn’t designed to be about fights. Why not just make conflicts where violence is resolved in different ways such as dialogue, intelligence and other things? Something that makes OP characters as Discord and the changelings don’t solving everything in a snap for being more complicated than using violence.

@CORDZ2000
It can be a problem if it ruins the villain’s threats.
Sombra’s threat got ruined completely in season 9, even before it turns out Discord was Grogar.

Having great power on the hero side is fine long as it doesn’t screw up the villain’s threats(or needing ridiculous pulls to keep said power from stopping the threat. Like how Chrysalis just happened to have a anti-magic throne or else her buggos would most likely get wiped out by a vengeful chaos spirit)

@nightshroud96
I think its interesting having a all power force on the heroes side, although he has been shown able to be helpful without powers so I wouldn’t have mind him losing them not on some spiteful punishment thing like yall be on but some new enemy takes them and there is a arc where he’s finding himself without them and fluttershy helps him through it.

@Jacalope
The problem still remains that Discod can literally instantly win anyway.
The fact he chooses not too doesn’t solve the problem, it still ruins the threats of other villains due to the possibility of instant loss.
Hell, the recent comic on how Discord instantly took out those cats(and the fact they only stopped him from doing that in the first place due to forced writing) shows more of how Discord ruins the threats of other villains.

Chaos magic NEEDS an explanation more than others since it needs some kind of balancing(that isn’t due to arrogance or choosing not to use it fully) so its existence won’t causes problems in storywriting.

@Jacalope  
Yur right completely

@nightshroud96  
Philosophically, any entity that can alter reality can never win instantly, especially tricksters like Discord since they want to feel any emotion in their existence that is empty because they already have everything in the universe, it is like playing a video game with all the activated codes, it’s just boring.
 
So beings like Discord take paths that are pragmatically less useful but that can provide fun. Since if it were so, Discord would have already defeated everyone without giving any opportunity but he did not do it more because he knows that conflict is what gives meaning to life itself.
 
And other limitations of Discord is his own morals and personality. That could be exemplified by the fact that Discord could easily have defeated Chrisalis outside of the Throne field, but the methods he could have used could have been unethical like a meteor shower or leaving an army of tough, wild animals falling from the sky, which is something that Fluttershy wouldn’t like it.
 
And talking about magic, i think I think the biggest problem is that the world of MLP is more designed for slice of life than for epic stories, since in itself, not only Discord breaks the inversion of epic stories, but also in theory Celestia and Luna would do it for being beings that they can control stars such as the sun and the moon, which has serious consequences if one analyzes it well, taking away too much prominence from the mane 6 to have to give them to Discord, Luna and Celestia.
 
And for that same world design, no type of magic is well explained, there is alicorn magic, chaos magic, umbrum magic, changeling magic, but how exactly do they work and how do they differ? It is something that no one bother to ask because it’s a slice of life where things are not taken so seriously since the interactions matter more than the lore itself.

@Jacalope  
Difference between Batman’s and Discord’s is Batman can’t warp reality and auto-win against anyone with a snap of his fingers due to said reality-bending.
 
Nothing is stopping Discord from auto-winning, Hell we see that happened in this comic where he instantly wins against the cats by turning them into harmless kittens. Like all Discord had to do is a simple thought and snap his fingers and that’s it, the villain instantly loses. Either turned into something like a piece of candy or instantly lose their weapon or ability to do something.  
The only way to balance out this crap so he won’t ruin the threats of other villains is say he can’t directly affect beings strong enough to resist his magic. Like he’s a glass cannon where he can be devastating and instantly-win but running into a strong villain(such as Nightmare Moon or Daybreaker for example), he’s going to have a hard time.
 

 
@CORDZ2000  
Doesn’t really fix the issue of the problems Discord’s reality-warping affects the story and the threats of the other villains.  
Having to rely on outright magic-nullfying doesn’t seem like the way. Only way to fix this is to balance out his magic, as in actually explore what he CAN’T do instead of relying on him getting fully negated by a plot device that a villain just happens to have to keep him from instantly solving the threat(such as Chrysalis’s anti-magic throne that the buggos apparently had this whole time) or him purposely not helping because “trickster mentor”.  
Look at what he did to Sombra in season 9, even before the reveal he was impersonating Grogar, Discord completely ruined Sombra’s threat. Which is really not good.

@Jacalope  
Wow jacalope this was a incredibly brilliant comment I agree.
 

 
@nightshroud96  
Discord losing his magic this time was also used as a characterization plot point as this series is about establishing bonds of friends overall than fandom lore, it was used for Discord to point out his past mistakes while noting this time he lose his magic while doing a good thing doing what someone close to him wanted. To put in perspective once again discord has a good heart but hes just a work in progress.

@nightshroud96  
Actually don’t need to making limits in Discord’s magic to know how to defeat any draconequus, Because in itself, if one analyzes it well and out of the box, there are ways to defeat it from the philosophies that regardless of whether Discord is arrogant or not, it will never take the easy path to be able to create something in its existential emptiness. He is an entity that needs conflict for his existence to make sense.
 
In addition, if Discord can get sick and run out of ideas, that means he can also be exhausted from doing so many tricks that he can be left at the mercy of the attacker, just like in Batman’s Knightfall where Bane applied the same strategy to tire Batman and break him. the back.
 
And that I do not get involved with thinking in a metatextual way where controlling reality can have its limits as no reality warper can think too fast in fiction and that there can be an “escape from reality” such as Gwenpool and Unbeatable.
 
In short, reality control has its own limits in concept but nobody wants to think about it.

@CORDZ2000  
Here’s the thing, the comic issue relied on anti-magic collars to prevent him from easily fixing the plot(along with Fluttershy stupidly making him not use magic which led him to get collared).  
And how he easily took out the cats and the king like that the moment his anti-magic plot device was gone and choose to step in, it showed how the villain’s threat is just artificial/pathetic due to they would be screwed hard if Discord steps in and auto-wins via his reality-warping crap.  
They need to explore weaknesses on Discord’s magic to balance him out instead of relying on stuff that outright shuts down magic or Discord being too arrogant. Because reality-warpers like him are OP and not in a good way.

@nightshroud96  
Discord did step in