What if you survive to like 5 hp and build up armor and get it removed and then just die? I don’t think it’s a good idea because in the end, armor is health.
Well then you add healing cards into your deck as well. It would be a risk you would have to take. Very few classes would run a full armor removal minion as it would be substantially understatted/overcosted. Until recently, rogue and hunter had no real options when they got low. Armor is not health so having another way to differentiate them is not only interesting but important for game diversity.
Alright, let's play that game. There's murloc/pirate removal tech called damage. Why did they create Hungry Crab/Golakka Crawler then? There's secret removal tech called playing around secrets. Why have Flare/Eater? There's weapon removal tech called playing a taunt minion to soak the damage. So why all of these Oozes every expansion? If damage is so good, then why do people play Alex? I get that you're trying to be funny, but it's frustrating when I'm trying to have a genuine discussion and the point gets belittled by a completely invalid response.
The difference between Techcards against secrets and all the other stuff is those things interact with the board or is able to kill you. Armor does nothing than increasing the lifetotal. If u play a a deck like Combo and u arent able to put pressure on ur armoring oppenent than u have 2 decisions to make.
First is change the deck in a way u can pressure the oppenent. Build it less greedier. If u dont like it then ur 2nd option is to concede its that easy. Freezemage was in 95% an autoloss against Controlwarrior and thats ok, i mean ye it can be dissapointing matchin into a nearly unwinnable matchup but there are more problemtaic things alrdy in the game. (beside of that it wasnt a reason for freezemage players to not play it even if controlwarrior was quite used)
Armor can interact with the board. Look at shield slam or reckless fury. And why on earth should decks be relegated to just conceding or playing a different archetype? Blizz added Geist to help decks stop losing to Jade Idol. Back in the pre-Geist days, if you told a control player to suck it up and change their deck because they were losing to Geist, you would have been flamed so badly. Blizz added Geist so that there could be an option if you didn't want to lose to the idols. And you know what happened? Most people never touched the card still. Same thing would happen with an armor removal card. And just like how a Jade Druid could still win despite being Geist'd, a warrior/druid could save their armor cards against OTK decks and wait for the armor removal card to drop and then next turn beef their armor way up. Perhaps I'm alone in this, but I'm always up for tech cards being added that help improve matchups against specific decks at the cost of consistency against other decks.
How about a card that sets each hero's armor to 5?
I like this as well. Halving armor is a minor concession I would make it designing a card like this but your idea is excellent too. I feel like it would probably be even stronger than what I have suggested though so people probably don't like that very much.
why would you play a card that removes 5 armor? or it removes all of it or u dont print such a card as a "techcard". i mean i wouldnt consider a card 4 mana 3/4 remove 5 armor from ur opp as a tech card, because it wouldnt help named archetypes (fatigue/combo) to go through 25+ armor it wouldnt make any sense for them running such a techcard because it isnt one.
Guys. Stop. We had that. Allextraza used to remove armor too. Now it doesn't. Do the math. It was broken.
Hmm. 8 mana 8/8 that reduces hero health to 15 and removes all armor vs. 8 mana 3/5 that removes all armor. Do the math. It's completely different. Even then, there could be all sorts of flexibility in the stats and cost to make it fair if that's broken still for some reason.
What do you mean "it has to be balanced"? There's literally no way to balance that.
The current highest single damage card in the game that can hit face is Pyroblast, for 10. What you're proposing is to somehow balance a card that has the possibility to deal 30, 40, 50 damage. That is impossible. You would literally kill all armor cards in the game; after all, there's no reason to even gain armor if your opponent can just get rid of it all in one shot.
You might as well say "healing is broken, why isn't there a card that removes health from your opponent equal to how much they healed this game"?
You can talk all you want. It just isn't going to happen. Be glad lifesteal can't increase you above starting HP like in Eternal.
Care to elaborate as to why it won't happen? Nobody could have predicted Geist being created. People literally came up with joke ideas of "Destroy all Jade Idols" and Blizz delivered on that except even better. Blizz listens to the community, and they regularly release new tech cards. I believe it's only a matter of time before they have armor tech.
My feeling generally is that I'd be fine with minions that have a bonus damage effect against armor, but I think outright removal is both really inelegant and dumb. You're talking effects that could essentially read "Deal 40 damage to the enemy Hero" against some decks on a single card, which is sort of ridiculous (as opposed to Alex, which maxes out at 25 damage, costs 9 mana, is legendary, and has an undersized body for its cost, and specifically doesn't deal with armor). As well, it still specifically damages Warrior and to a lesser extent Druid, as their only decent sources of healing are based on armor gain. If you balance the minion around that, like the 8 mana 3/5 you brought up, then it becomes so bad outside its targets that it's not worth running even in limited burn combo decks unless armor-heavy strategies constitute over half the meta. And they likely wouldn't because the mere existence of a hard counter card disincentivises their play, so in a way printing a card like that would be almost as good as not printing a card at all, but with the worse effect of constraining deck design.
As people have said before though, it feels sort of like that kind of tech isn't all that necessary. If you want to remove armor, play minions and chip it away. If you're playing a deck with limited burn damage (i.e. Freeze Mage), take the loss on the chin and move on. Armor is specifically meant to counter that style of limited burn deck, and I think that's entirely healthy. This coming from someone who loved classic freeze mage more than any other deck and felt all the pain of control warrior matchups in that archetype's heyday.
I'll say the same thing I've said in here a few times. Is it ridiculous that the Pally DK can kill you outright? If that's acceptable, then anything is acceptable in this game provided it's balanced properly. Sure, "remove all armor" might be inelegant but there have been all sorts of "elegant" solutions provided as counters that didn't pan out at all because they attempted to be too balanced in all matchups. To make an actual counter to armoring strategies, you need something that deals with it fully. Additionally, there's no reason druids and warriors can't hold onto some of their armor cards and play them after to offset the counter card. We're regularly playing around things in Hearthstone, why shouldn't armor be one of those too.
In terms of deciding whether something is worth running or not, that's up to the deck architect. OTK Druid was one of my most common matchups in the two months of wild ladder before Witchwood. As Reno Big Spells Mage, I had no issue surviving with Ice Block and then healing back up and outvaluing them, but if I played an OTK deck, I would've had no chance due to all the armor. If you are going from a 0% win rate to even a 50% win rate on even 1/5 of your matchups, that can be huge. And often OTK decks have plenty of draw so a dead draw isn't always terrible in the other matchups. In terms of disincentivizing play of armor decks due to a counter card, Jade was just as popular when Geist was released as it was before, since people weren't willing to run such a card. I still run it in some wild decks to get a free win against Jade when it pops up.
I agree that armor is there to counter OTK plays and I think that's fantastic. I just think that if this game is meant to be strategic, there should be strategic choices in deckbuilding that allow the OTK decks to gain an edge over their counters. And even then, you could include a counter to that counter if it's too oppressive (perhaps a secret where if you lose more than 10 armor in a turn, deal damage equal to the armor you lost to the opposing hero at the end of your turn). Or you can just balance it appropriately. There's no reason for people to have to "take the loss on the chin" in a game where cards can be printed and you can adjust your deck to help counter opponents.
What do you mean "it has to be balanced"? There's literally no way to balance that.
The current highest single damage card in the game that can hit face is Pyroblast, for 10. What you're proposing is to somehow balance a card that has the possibility to deal 30, 40, 50 damage. That is impossible. You would literally kill all armor cards in the game; after all, there's no reason to even gain armor if your opponent can just get rid of it all in one shot.
You might as well say "healing is broken, why isn't there a card that removes health from your opponent equal to how much they healed this game"?
They found a way to balance "destroy the enemy hero". I'm sure Blizzard can find a way to balance this. And I think that a card that deals damage equal to how much an opponent healed that game would be interesting, as long as it was balanced appropriately (quest reward, Rin-like setup, hand conditions). In terms of a Pyroblast comparison, That is an unconditional 10 damage. C'Thun on the other hand can hit for hundreds provided the conditions are right. There's plenty of reason to get armor as it would force someone to play their armor removal card and then you could play your other armor cards after. It's called baiting. We do it all the time with AOE and other removal in hearthstone. If the card was balanced well enough, it certainly wouldn't kill armor.
How about a card that sets each hero's armor to 5?
I like this as well. Halving armor is a minor concession I would make it designing a card like this but your idea is excellent too. I feel like it would probably be even stronger than what I have suggested though so people probably don't like that very much.
Epic 5 mana 5/3, Deathrattle: set each hero's armor to 5 at the end of the turn. That sound good?
A one card armor clear is a terrible concept. It takes a lot of cards, hero powers, and mana invested to build up that layer of cushion and there should never be a tech card that peels it all off.
A decent sort of minion to counteract would be a minion that deals double damage to a hero with armor or something of the like.
It takes a large number of cards, mana, etc to play 5 secrets and then get them eaten. Same with AOEs. The point is to have counterplay around when you use these just like every other decision in the game. The benefit of hearthstone is it’s not just a free win for whoever makes the best tempo plays, you play around things to waste your opponent’s resources.
I want to know how someone plays 5 secrets without them getting triggered before you drop the secret tech card. The mass secret clears are more of an answer to things like Mysterious Challenger, which is a one to one tech clear.
A card that would allow you to wipe armor completely is either going to have terrible stats or a huge mana cost. If it's cheap than it's too powerful for combo decks. Basically you are making a card that's tech is so specialized that it would have to be horrible outside of tech specific matchups. Essentially you will be making a card that won't be played.
A tech that does extra damage to armor attached to a creature (or even as an optional battle cry, clear X armor) is much easier to stat and make it usable in most decks.
I am of the opinion that Alexstrasza is too broken because it is essentially "Battlecry: Deal 15 damage to the enemy hero" for just one card. That is insane.
Your card would potentially be even worse. It would be something like "Battlecry: Deal 40 damage to the enemy hero" in some cases. For one card, that is an unfair amount of power.
Can armor stacking be frustrating? Yes. But the solution is not to run a single card to counter it. Because, if you have a card that removes all the opponent's armor, you will get decks that function like Alexstrasza, where all you have to do is run removal to control your opponent's board until you've assembled enough combo pieces, and then you can just play a single card to deal a significant amount of damage to the opponent. In other words, a card like this would reward players for ignoring the enemy hero completely, when the proper way to deal with lots of armor is to consistently play threats and attack the enemy hero.
The main reason this is coming up now is because Warrior and Druid have not only had a lot of armor generation pushed towards them, they also have a lot of Taunt synergy at the moment. Because of this, the player is able to protect himself through consistent armor generation AND deny that armor being destroyed by throwing up walls of taunts. Is this frustrating? Yes. But we can play around it. Quest Warrior and Hadronox Druid do not have 100% win rates, therefore there are solutions other than simply creating a tech card that can act as a nuke for combo decks (when the appropriate response to someone who will deal 30 to you from hand has always been to get yourself as far out of 30 range as possible via armor generation).
I've always thought they they should add some sort of keyword that allows attacks such as weapons, spells or minions to go through armour. Maybe call it penetration xD
ew
Not really something that comes up enough for a keyword. They recently pruned 'Enrage' because it wasn't used a lot. I doubt there would be near enough cards (since it effects so few classes) to constitute a new word for it.
There are a number of issues with the premise here. I'm posting from my cell so multiple quotes is time consuming...for that reason imm either copy-pasta or write out the gist of what I'm referring to by hand.
First issue is in the OP. It is stated that aggro won't need an armor-tech card, nor will control or Midrange as all can control the board, or chip through armor or would become obnoxious with the tech. Then it is stated that therefore the card is needed for OTK decks, since players building up armor has no counterplay for those decks.
This misses a crucial point which is that OTK decks by their definition are decks that rely on their opponents having no ability to counterplay. In return, there is the counterplay to the OTK which is building armor to a level that can't be burst through. Stating that counterplay to an OTK has no counterplay and thinking that this is bad and needs counterplay is extending circular logic to absurd levels. What would be the counterplay to the counterplay (armor destruction) to the counterplay (armor gain) to OTK (unstoppable without high armor)??
The other issue is this in a post some way down: "The main problem is the ambiguous nature of armor itself. While reducing armor is basically identical to dealing damage, ADDING armor is NOT identical to healing. (This can be impressively seen in a Priest / Warrior matchup. While the Priest Hero Power is pretty useless in the first rounds, Warrior can add up a fair amount of "additional Health"...)"
This is stated as a problem. 'Man, these two things aren't the same, one can give you more than 30 life, so we need to find a way to stop this' . This is the wrong way of looking at this difference. These two mechanics didn't come into being separately by accident, nor did Priest and Warriors hero powers just appear with the classes. They were DESIGNED this way. These were conscious decisions made by designers because they felt it would add to the game. You may disagree, but you know, it's their game. Saying that it needs a counterplay (other than the obvious, damage) is like saying they should have capped total effective health at 30, or had armor never be in the game. Maybe you're right, but it would be a narrower game, and it wasn't their design.
Tl:Dr; armor is in the game and was designed as it is. If your OTK can't get through it, design a quicker OTK or accept that you won't beat a deck that builds armor. Or don't play OTK they're uninteractive and Blizzard don't like them anyway.
armor is the way some classes heal out of range. it just seems silly. it's like having a card that just removes all your opponents life a.k.a. win the game. also unless you specifically play burn mage the card seems to not have much use. and to have a hard counter (armoring up) to burn strategies sounds very balanced to me.
Some armor removal would be ok like a battlecry that is remove 5 armor from your opponent or something but taking all of it would be too much
why would you play a card that removes 5 armor? or it removes all of it or u dont print such a card as a "techcard". i mean i wouldnt consider a card 4 mana 3/4 remove 5 armor from ur opp as a tech card, because it wouldnt help named archetypes (fatigue/combo) to go through 25+ armor it wouldnt make any sense for them running such a techcard because it isnt one.
You can talk all you want. It just isn't going to happen. Be glad lifesteal can't increase you above starting HP like in Eternal.
Free to try and find a game, dealing cards for sorrow, cards for pain.
What do you mean "it has to be balanced"? There's literally no way to balance that.
The current highest single damage card in the game that can hit face is Pyroblast, for 10. What you're proposing is to somehow balance a card that has the possibility to deal 30, 40, 50 damage. That is impossible. You would literally kill all armor cards in the game; after all, there's no reason to even gain armor if your opponent can just get rid of it all in one shot.
You might as well say "healing is broken, why isn't there a card that removes health from your opponent equal to how much they healed this game"?
My feeling generally is that I'd be fine with minions that have a bonus damage effect against armor, but I think outright removal is both really inelegant and dumb. You're talking effects that could essentially read "Deal 40 damage to the enemy Hero" against some decks on a single card, which is sort of ridiculous (as opposed to Alex, which maxes out at 25 damage, costs 9 mana, is legendary, and has an undersized body for its cost, and specifically doesn't deal with armor). As well, it still specifically damages Warrior and to a lesser extent Druid, as their only decent sources of healing are based on armor gain. If you balance the minion around that, like the 8 mana 3/5 you brought up, then it becomes so bad outside its targets that it's not worth running even in limited burn combo decks unless armor-heavy strategies constitute over half the meta. And they likely wouldn't because the mere existence of a hard counter card disincentivises their play, so in a way printing a card like that would be almost as good as not printing a card at all, but with the worse effect of constraining deck design.
As people have said before though, it feels sort of like that kind of tech isn't all that necessary. If you want to remove armor, play minions and chip it away. If you're playing a deck with limited burn damage (i.e. Freeze Mage), take the loss on the chin and move on. Armor is specifically meant to counter that style of limited burn deck, and I think that's entirely healthy. This coming from someone who loved classic freeze mage more than any other deck and felt all the pain of control warrior matchups in that archetype's heyday.
I'll say the same thing I've said in here a few times. Is it ridiculous that the Pally DK can kill you outright? If that's acceptable, then anything is acceptable in this game provided it's balanced properly. Sure, "remove all armor" might be inelegant but there have been all sorts of "elegant" solutions provided as counters that didn't pan out at all because they attempted to be too balanced in all matchups. To make an actual counter to armoring strategies, you need something that deals with it fully. Additionally, there's no reason druids and warriors can't hold onto some of their armor cards and play them after to offset the counter card. We're regularly playing around things in Hearthstone, why shouldn't armor be one of those too.
In terms of deciding whether something is worth running or not, that's up to the deck architect. OTK Druid was one of my most common matchups in the two months of wild ladder before Witchwood. As Reno Big Spells Mage, I had no issue surviving with Ice Block and then healing back up and outvaluing them, but if I played an OTK deck, I would've had no chance due to all the armor. If you are going from a 0% win rate to even a 50% win rate on even 1/5 of your matchups, that can be huge. And often OTK decks have plenty of draw so a dead draw isn't always terrible in the other matchups. In terms of disincentivizing play of armor decks due to a counter card, Jade was just as popular when Geist was released as it was before, since people weren't willing to run such a card. I still run it in some wild decks to get a free win against Jade when it pops up.
I agree that armor is there to counter OTK plays and I think that's fantastic. I just think that if this game is meant to be strategic, there should be strategic choices in deckbuilding that allow the OTK decks to gain an edge over their counters. And even then, you could include a counter to that counter if it's too oppressive (perhaps a secret where if you lose more than 10 armor in a turn, deal damage equal to the armor you lost to the opposing hero at the end of your turn). Or you can just balance it appropriately. There's no reason for people to have to "take the loss on the chin" in a game where cards can be printed and you can adjust your deck to help counter opponents.
the forgotten epics
Junkbot Frost Giant Luckydo Buccaneer Sea Reaver Darkspeaker Mini-Mage Blubber Baron Captain's Parrot Magnataur Alpha
set opponents armor to 15 is the only way to balance it. otherwise you completely fuck over druid/warrior for stabilizing at low hp.
overall it's a non issue though.
A card that would allow you to wipe armor completely is either going to have terrible stats or a huge mana cost. If it's cheap than it's too powerful for combo decks. Basically you are making a card that's tech is so specialized that it would have to be horrible outside of tech specific matchups. Essentially you will be making a card that won't be played.
A tech that does extra damage to armor attached to a creature (or even as an optional battle cry, clear X armor) is much easier to stat and make it usable in most decks.
I am of the opinion that Alexstrasza is too broken because it is essentially "Battlecry: Deal 15 damage to the enemy hero" for just one card. That is insane.
Your card would potentially be even worse. It would be something like "Battlecry: Deal 40 damage to the enemy hero" in some cases. For one card, that is an unfair amount of power.
Can armor stacking be frustrating? Yes. But the solution is not to run a single card to counter it. Because, if you have a card that removes all the opponent's armor, you will get decks that function like Alexstrasza, where all you have to do is run removal to control your opponent's board until you've assembled enough combo pieces, and then you can just play a single card to deal a significant amount of damage to the opponent. In other words, a card like this would reward players for ignoring the enemy hero completely, when the proper way to deal with lots of armor is to consistently play threats and attack the enemy hero.
The main reason this is coming up now is because Warrior and Druid have not only had a lot of armor generation pushed towards them, they also have a lot of Taunt synergy at the moment. Because of this, the player is able to protect himself through consistent armor generation AND deny that armor being destroyed by throwing up walls of taunts. Is this frustrating? Yes. But we can play around it. Quest Warrior and Hadronox Druid do not have 100% win rates, therefore there are solutions other than simply creating a tech card that can act as a nuke for combo decks (when the appropriate response to someone who will deal 30 to you from hand has always been to get yourself as far out of 30 range as possible via armor generation).
Not really something that comes up enough for a keyword. They recently pruned 'Enrage' because it wasn't used a lot. I doubt there would be near enough cards (since it effects so few classes) to constitute a new word for it.
There are a number of issues with the premise here. I'm posting from my cell so multiple quotes is time consuming...for that reason imm either copy-pasta or write out the gist of what I'm referring to by hand.
First issue is in the OP. It is stated that aggro won't need an armor-tech card, nor will control or Midrange as all can control the board, or chip through armor or would become obnoxious with the tech. Then it is stated that therefore the card is needed for OTK decks, since players building up armor has no counterplay for those decks.
This misses a crucial point which is that OTK decks by their definition are decks that rely on their opponents having no ability to counterplay. In return, there is the counterplay to the OTK which is building armor to a level that can't be burst through. Stating that counterplay to an OTK has no counterplay and thinking that this is bad and needs counterplay is extending circular logic to absurd levels. What would be the counterplay to the counterplay (armor destruction) to the counterplay (armor gain) to OTK (unstoppable without high armor)??
The other issue is this in a post some way down: "The main problem is the ambiguous nature of armor itself. While reducing armor is basically identical to dealing damage, ADDING armor is NOT identical to healing. (This can be impressively seen in a Priest / Warrior matchup. While the Priest Hero Power is pretty useless in the first rounds, Warrior can add up a fair amount of "additional Health"...)"
This is stated as a problem. 'Man, these two things aren't the same, one can give you more than 30 life, so we need to find a way to stop this' . This is the wrong way of looking at this difference. These two mechanics didn't come into being separately by accident, nor did Priest and Warriors hero powers just appear with the classes. They were DESIGNED this way. These were conscious decisions made by designers because they felt it would add to the game. You may disagree, but you know, it's their game. Saying that it needs a counterplay (other than the obvious, damage) is like saying they should have capped total effective health at 30, or had armor never be in the game. Maybe you're right, but it would be a narrower game, and it wasn't their design.
Tl:Dr; armor is in the game and was designed as it is. If your OTK can't get through it, design a quicker OTK or accept that you won't beat a deck that builds armor. Or don't play OTK they're uninteractive and Blizzard don't like them anyway.
armor is the way some classes heal out of range. it just seems silly. it's like having a card that just removes all your opponents life a.k.a. win the game. also unless you specifically play burn mage the card seems to not have much use. and to have a hard counter (armoring up) to burn strategies sounds very balanced to me.
This would not be a tech card. It would be an auto include in any aggro/ burn style deck..