First off, this is a really interesting topic about which some good points have been made on both sides of for and against an armor tech card. My opinion is that if (and I'm not sure which way I would stand) there was a tech card for armor, I would have to agree that it would need to be something to the effect of destroy your opponent's armor and heal you opponent for the amount destroyed. (It would have to be worded a little differently since otherwise it could be an OTK with Auchenai Soulpriest, but that's beside the point.)
A few things to contribute to both sides of the argument:
An armor removal wouldn't necessarily eliminate all counter play to OTK's (at least the type mentioned above that would only bring a player down to 30 effective health) since that would consume a whole turn/enough that the OTK can't happen that turn. The opposing player could have planned ahead and gain back a bit of the armor after the tech card was played, potentially putting them out of range of the OTK.
With regard the matter of unwinnable matchups, if a deck has nothing it can do proactively and only has an OTK for ~30 damage, I would hope that the player would recognize that either there are adjustments that could be made to the deck or that their win condition is weak with respect to the how much they have to devote to pulling off the OTK. There is always a trade off between what we are willing to sacrifice between different match-ups, or even overall win rate for enjoyability, so it's not that different for there to be a few niche matchups which go very poorly for some decks.
There shoud be more cards like Golakka Crawler or Plated Beetle, but less cards like Eater of Secrets. So no sledgehammer "Destroy All Armor" stuff, but sophisticated playable tech cards (slightly below average in a low-armor META, but above average in an armor-heavy META).
Examples (the first one not being related to armor but to secrets, suggesting a fair anti-secret tech card):
- 2/3 beast for 2 mana, Battlecry: Destroy a random opponent's Secret.
- 2/3 beast for 2 mana, ignores armor when attacking a hero (bypasses armor and deals straight damage).
- 2/3 beast for 2 mana, Battlecry: Remove up to 3 armor of the opponent, you gain as much armor as removed.
- 2/3 beast getting +1/+1 whenever it "eats" armor.
- Reasonably stated Taunt thing (maybe 3/5 4 mana) immune to heros and spell damage as long as opponent has armor.
- Burnspells which deal slightly more damage when opponent has armor (similar to Mortal Strike).
- 4/5 - 4 mana thing getting Taunt and +1/+1 as long as opponent has armor.
- Nicely statted Legendary with Battlecry: Destroy an enemy minion with a casting cost equal or lower than the opponent's amount of armor (similar to Hemet Nesingwary or Rend Blackhand.
Just off the top of my head there's Branching Paths, Warrior Hero Power, Druid Hero Power, Arcane Artificer, Shield Block, Bring It On, Ultimate Infestation, Drywhisker Armourer, Alley Armoursmith, Armoursmith, Bark Skin, Bash, Shield Maiden, all the Death Knight cards...
Mage, Druid and Warrior obviously have the most, but every class has access to at least a little armour gain through DKs and neutral minions.
As a comparison there are something like 24 Secrets in total, 4 Secret classes, and 2 anti-Secret tech cards.
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).
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.
I've written this already a couple times but the effect clearly is not too strong as we have a "win the game" effect given by Pally DK in the game. So as long as there are sufficient bounds on it to make sure that it is balanced (restrictive activation, leading up cards, etc), there shouldn't be a power issue. My post has been specifically tailored to emphasize that this is not for burn mages, it is for decks that deal excessive damage over one or two turns, not constant pressure throughout the game. I agree that armoring should still be a way to counter these decks which is why you can save some armor cards in these matchups for after they burn your armor to essentially undo what they just did.
This would not be a tech card. It would be an auto include in any aggro/ burn style deck..
My post has been specifically tailored to emphasize that this is not for burn mages, it is for decks that deal excessive damage over one or two turns, not constant pressure throughout the game. It is easy enough to make it so the card is unappealing for aggro. Alex would have been autoinclude in aggro if it cost 1 mana and had its same effect, but due to it costing 9, nobody would use it in aggro. Set the cost of this high enough and aggro/burn no longer uses it. The goal is mass armor removal at a sufficient price as opposed to a reasonably priced way to regularly take out armor.
There aren't enough armor-based cards across all of the classes to justify armor removal cards.
There aren't enough demon-based cards across all classes to justify Light's Champion yet it was still printed. Armor is a dominant strategy for countering OTK decks. Since an entire archetype could be benefited by a tech card, I see plenty of justification for it.
There is an armor removalntech and it’s called ‘damage’. You can inflict it with minions and spells and each use removes armor equal to attack of minion or power of a spell. It can even be used as a health removalntech.
People keep saying variations on "there already is armour tech. It's called damage LOL!"
This is such a lazy opinion. E.g. There are tech cards that are anti murlocs and pirates. They aren't necessary because you could always just kill the murlocs and pirates through damage, yet we still have them.
I'm sure if the developers thought about it there could be ways of implementing this that are interesting, reasonably interactive, and aren't too OP. How about any of these:
- a spell that halves the opponent's current armour, so that it only has value if the opponent has already gained a ridiculous amount
- a minion that removes 1 extra armour beyond its attack damage on its first attack, 2 extra armour on its second attack, 3 extra armour on its third, etc.
- a spell like Hunter's toxic arrow that damages a minion but gives them some sort of armour-piercing effect
- a minion similar to Mindbreaker which prevents further armour gain while it is alive
- a minion that gains some sort of benefit based on how much armour the opponent has, e.g. 'gains +1/+1 for every 3 armour the enemy hero has'
Complaining that armour gain gives OTK decks "little counterplay" seems a bit rich.
I also really don't think a card that removes all armour would be a good idea (because it has the potential to dumpster control/fatigue/dead man's warrior forever). What I could maybe get behind is some minions that do more damage to armour when they attack. Maybe 5 mana 4/6, can't be targeted, deal double (maybe even triple) damage to armour. Something that is problematic for an armour based opponent without being a 1 card win condition against decks that rely on high armour gain.
Complaining that armour gain gives OTK decks "little counterplay" seems a bit rich.
I also really don't think a card that removes all armour would be a good idea (because it has the potential to dumpster control/fatigue/dead man's warrior forever). What I could maybe get behind is some minions that do more damage to armour when they attack. Maybe 5 mana 4/6, can't be targeted, deal double (maybe even triple) damage to armour. Something that is problematic for an armour based opponent without being a 1 card win condition against decks that rely on high armour gain.
OTK decks have counterplay options against them. Dirty Rat and Deathlord are excellent at this. I'm also not some OTK player whining about terrible matchups. I think there should be far more tech cards in the game (including more than counter OTK) so that you can tailor many of your matchups. It would make deck construction far more interesting than "hur dur, how do i type hsreplay into google?". Besides, one of the biggest culprits I mentioned was an OTK deck (druid in wild) as it can buy often 2-3 turns with armor gain.
Geist never dumpstered Jade Druid and it was a far worse hit as it completely took away its win condition by providing a barely self-punishing minion for every single control deck to slot in. If you're worried about sidelining these heavy hitters, making the tech card so it's bad in other matchups is an excellent way to manage that. To state that such a card is a one card win condition is definite exaggeration. It helps achieve victory but it is in no way unmanageable. Here's a scenario: Druid has say 14 armor from her power and DK. OTK deck with 35 damage uses tech card to remove all armor. Druid, knowing he was up against this deck, wisely saved two branching paths, uses both AND hero power to go up to 27 armor and then declares "My thanks to you." That to me requires much better gameplay on both sides. Is it unfair if I played seven minions on the board with 4 health and then got Flamestriked? People actually used to whine about that in early days. Then they learned to play around big AOEs instead of just throwing things on board. If this card actually worked out (and did so only for slow decks), people would learn the matchups that use it and save armor cards for when they got hit.
no, no and no, we finally reached a point where not every deck that's played is an aggro deck (because as much as people praise un'goro and Wotg for having diverse metas with 17 viable decks each 16 out of those 16 were aggro and without tar creeper and primordial drake un'goro would have been total caca) and you jsut want to make aggro mroe powerful by printing a broken counter to one of its only counters?, i do agree tho that having a "piercing" keyword where the damage is done to the health regardless of armor would be a possibility but at the end of the day it'd have to been carefully added because armor is fine.
edit: read a post above about a minion like mind breaker tha tprevents armor gain while it's on the battlefield, i'ma ctually not too against this idea as long as it's costed abd stated as Eater of Secrets, 4 mana 2/4.
if it's aimed at fatigue decks and you want aggro to not use it, it has to read " [battlecry: destroy all armor. Your minons can't attack for the remainder of the game (even if this dies or is silenced", in fact it could be a thing like Nether Portal, which is an indestructible artifact in the board that's not a minion; something like this (also ignore the typo in the token's title).
Edit: The idea here is that you collapsed a tower onn top of the enemy hero and he could survive by using his armor, however since he's now buried into its ruins you can't find him and thus can't attack him.
I think any card that destroys all armor is way too powerful. I could see it existing as like a fairly cheap but high statted weapon that only damages armor and can't attack minions, like say a 3 mana 6/2. I still doubt it would see play much considering it's almost always useless against anything that isn't a warrior or druid. It would be nice to have the option, though.
I think an overcosted/understated minion with "Battlecry: Steal Half your Opponents Armor (rounded down)" would work just fine as a tech card to help balance crazy armor gain.
no, no and no, we finally reached a point where not every deck that's played is an aggro deck (because as much as people praise un'goro and Wotg for having diverse metas with 17 viable decks each 16 out of those 16 were aggro and without tar creeper and primordial drake un'goro would have been total caca) and you jsut want to make aggro mroe powerful by printing a broken counter to one of its only counters?, i do agree tho that having a "piercing" keyword where the damage is done to the health regardless of armor would be a possibility but at the end of the day it'd have to been carefully added because armor is fine.
edit: read a post above about a minion like mind breaker tha tprevents armor gain while it's on the battlefield, i'ma ctually not too against this idea as long as it's costed abd stated as Eater of Secrets, 4 mana 2/4.
I've said this multiple times throughout this thread, including in my main post. This is not about aggro and never was. It's about allowing diversity of choices in the future, particularly when control warrior becomes stronger, and also about allowing decks to have the tools to deal with things like OTK druid. Aggro already has the tools it needs to counter these decks so a card that removes armor should never be made so that it can help aggro. It's specifically for OTK and other late game control decks. I'm confused because it appears that you are critical of adding a tech card because it might help aggro, but then you propose an armor piercing card which would only ever be used in aggro deck as a finisher (OTK cares nothing about this unless it can bump the card up to 30 damage). IMO the only way to make this work without being too OP or absolutely useless is to directly remove, steal, set armor levels. A few suggestions have been posted which would be okay, but for such a niche tech card, it needs to have a strong effect or it would never be used.
I find it hard to buy the Geist or Paladin DK arguments. Paladin DK is an extremely constrained effect that only goes off if a significant combo is assembled or if your opponent fails to deal with your board at all. Not really the same as something that deals massive damage to effective health without conditons or with limited conditions like deathrattle (And if we're discussing a card like that with extensive conditions, I can't see it being any better than "so terrible I'd be ashamed to print it and waste people's pack space." Besides, if you want an armor destruction quest or something similar, you already have it. It's called dealing damage.).
As for Geist, the reason it didn't annihilate Jade Druid initially is that Jade Druid's primary win condition wasn't actually Jade Idol. The deck was a tempo deck that had a late game infinite value engine if needed. Maybe 1 game in 10 for the deck went deep enough that Idols became crucial, otherwise the tempo components of the deck won out as they were intended to. Very different from how complete armor removal would simply invalidate any sort of control or fatigue warrior's gameplan. Maly Druid might be able to weather it, but that's similar to the Geist case where the tech was removing an ancillary strength rather than the deck's core.
Again, I think armor techs will come eventually, and they'll be healthy, but they certainly shouldn't be something like "Remove Your Opponent's Armor." That's pretty much the definition of a toxic, feel-bad mechanic in that it invalidates everything you've already done in a game (as opposed to something like Geist that might cripple you but at least it doesn't make your prior actions irrelevant). I'd be cool with something along the lines of "Deal Double Damage to Armor," or "Deal Half Damage to Armor, Half to Health," or something else of that nature, but giving a hard tech against something that is fundamentally super interactable already is a bit off-base in my mind.
The big difference between weapon or secret removal & complete armor removal is more staggering than what you're giving credit to OP.
With weapon removal the opponent has only committed one turn setting that up, with the one notable exception of Kingsbane Rogues. Secrets generally have had 2-3 turns committed to setting up secrets when secret tech removes them (totally anywhere from 0-9 mana across those turns).
Armor removal obliterating all armor gains is much more ridiculously OP than either of those considering it would most likely be used on a druid, warrior, or even control mage who has amassed armor gain for many turns. Being on the very conservative side on this example let's say that this theoretical armor removal was used on the opponent after the opponent had spent 5 turns gaining armor. That means one tech card has removed 5 turn's worth of armor gain plays (totaling at least 10 mana, if not much much more).
We talk about hate for mana cheesing plays, yet this is almost mana cheese of a different type, mana cheesing how much mana you would actually need to use in order to obliterate the play of an opponent that fairly committed much more mana and many more turns than you needed to utterly counter that play. Would you consider a 2-6 mana pyroblast fair? If not, then how could you consider a tech that is essentially the same thing for armor gain classes fair?
First off, this is a really interesting topic about which some good points have been made on both sides of for and against an armor tech card. My opinion is that if (and I'm not sure which way I would stand) there was a tech card for armor, I would have to agree that it would need to be something to the effect of destroy your opponent's armor and heal you opponent for the amount destroyed. (It would have to be worded a little differently since otherwise it could be an OTK with Auchenai Soulpriest, but that's beside the point.)
A few things to contribute to both sides of the argument:
An armor removal wouldn't necessarily eliminate all counter play to OTK's (at least the type mentioned above that would only bring a player down to 30 effective health) since that would consume a whole turn/enough that the OTK can't happen that turn. The opposing player could have planned ahead and gain back a bit of the armor after the tech card was played, potentially putting them out of range of the OTK.
With regard the matter of unwinnable matchups, if a deck has nothing it can do proactively and only has an OTK for ~30 damage, I would hope that the player would recognize that either there are adjustments that could be made to the deck or that their win condition is weak with respect to the how much they have to devote to pulling off the OTK. There is always a trade off between what we are willing to sacrifice between different match-ups, or even overall win rate for enjoyability, so it's not that different for there to be a few niche matchups which go very poorly for some decks.
There shoud be more cards like Golakka Crawler or Plated Beetle, but less cards like Eater of Secrets. So no sledgehammer "Destroy All Armor" stuff, but sophisticated playable tech cards (slightly below average in a low-armor META, but above average in an armor-heavy META).
Examples (the first one not being related to armor but to secrets, suggesting a fair anti-secret tech card):
- 2/3 beast for 2 mana, Battlecry: Destroy a random opponent's Secret.
- 2/3 beast for 2 mana, ignores armor when attacking a hero (bypasses armor and deals straight damage).
- 2/3 beast for 2 mana, Battlecry: Remove up to 3 armor of the opponent, you gain as much armor as removed.
- 2/3 beast getting +1/+1 whenever it "eats" armor.
- Reasonably stated Taunt thing (maybe 3/5 4 mana) immune to heros and spell damage as long as opponent has armor.
- Burnspells which deal slightly more damage when opponent has armor (similar to Mortal Strike).
- 4/5 - 4 mana thing getting Taunt and +1/+1 as long as opponent has armor.
- Nicely statted Legendary with Battlecry: Destroy an enemy minion with a casting cost equal or lower than the opponent's amount of armor (similar to Hemet Nesingwary or Rend Blackhand.
There aren't enough armor-based cards across all of the classes to justify armor removal cards.
Just off the top of my head there's Branching Paths, Warrior Hero Power, Druid Hero Power, Arcane Artificer, Shield Block, Bring It On, Ultimate Infestation, Drywhisker Armourer, Alley Armoursmith, Armoursmith, Bark Skin, Bash, Shield Maiden, all the Death Knight cards...
Mage, Druid and Warrior obviously have the most, but every class has access to at least a little armour gain through DKs and neutral minions.
As a comparison there are something like 24 Secrets in total, 4 Secret classes, and 2 anti-Secret tech cards.
I think there should be cards that deal damage through armor. They wouldn't lower your opponent's armor count; they would just deal damage.
remove Rin and aggro mage from the game then you can have your anti armor tech lol
There is an armor removalntech and it’s called ‘damage’. You can inflict it with minions and spells and each use removes armor equal to attack of minion or power of a spell. It can even be used as a health removalntech.
--Alfi--
What about a max armor number? You cannot get more armor than x
People keep saying variations on "there already is armour tech. It's called damage LOL!"
This is such a lazy opinion. E.g. There are tech cards that are anti murlocs and pirates. They aren't necessary because you could always just kill the murlocs and pirates through damage, yet we still have them.
I'm sure if the developers thought about it there could be ways of implementing this that are interesting, reasonably interactive, and aren't too OP. How about any of these:
- a spell that halves the opponent's current armour, so that it only has value if the opponent has already gained a ridiculous amount
- a minion that removes 1 extra armour beyond its attack damage on its first attack, 2 extra armour on its second attack, 3 extra armour on its third, etc.
- a spell like Hunter's toxic arrow that damages a minion but gives them some sort of armour-piercing effect
- a minion similar to Mindbreaker which prevents further armour gain while it is alive
- a minion that gains some sort of benefit based on how much armour the opponent has, e.g. 'gains +1/+1 for every 3 armour the enemy hero has'
Complaining that armour gain gives OTK decks "little counterplay" seems a bit rich.
I also really don't think a card that removes all armour would be a good idea (because it has the potential to dumpster control/fatigue/dead man's warrior forever). What I could maybe get behind is some minions that do more damage to armour when they attack. Maybe 5 mana 4/6, can't be targeted, deal double (maybe even triple) damage to armour. Something that is problematic for an armour based opponent without being a 1 card win condition against decks that rely on high armour gain.
no, no and no, we finally reached a point where not every deck that's played is an aggro deck (because as much as people praise un'goro and Wotg for having diverse metas with 17 viable decks each 16 out of those 16 were aggro and without tar creeper and primordial drake un'goro would have been total caca) and you jsut want to make aggro mroe powerful by printing a broken counter to one of its only counters?, i do agree tho that having a "piercing" keyword where the damage is done to the health regardless of armor would be a possibility but at the end of the day it'd have to been carefully added because armor is fine.
edit: read a post above about a minion like mind breaker tha tprevents armor gain while it's on the battlefield, i'ma ctually not too against this idea as long as it's costed abd stated as Eater of Secrets, 4 mana 2/4.
if it's aimed at fatigue decks and you want aggro to not use it, it has to read " [battlecry: destroy all armor. Your minons can't attack for the remainder of the game (even if this dies or is silenced", in fact it could be a thing like Nether Portal, which is an indestructible artifact in the board that's not a minion; something like this (also ignore the typo in the token's title).
Edit: The idea here is that you collapsed a tower onn top of the enemy hero and he could survive by using his armor, however since he's now buried into its ruins you can't find him and thus can't attack him.
I think any card that destroys all armor is way too powerful. I could see it existing as like a fairly cheap but high statted weapon that only damages armor and can't attack minions, like say a 3 mana 6/2. I still doubt it would see play much considering it's almost always useless against anything that isn't a warrior or druid. It would be nice to have the option, though.
I think an overcosted/understated minion with "Battlecry: Steal Half your Opponents Armor (rounded down)" would work just fine as a tech card to help balance crazy armor gain.
I find it hard to buy the Geist or Paladin DK arguments. Paladin DK is an extremely constrained effect that only goes off if a significant combo is assembled or if your opponent fails to deal with your board at all. Not really the same as something that deals massive damage to effective health without conditons or with limited conditions like deathrattle (And if we're discussing a card like that with extensive conditions, I can't see it being any better than "so terrible I'd be ashamed to print it and waste people's pack space." Besides, if you want an armor destruction quest or something similar, you already have it. It's called dealing damage.).
As for Geist, the reason it didn't annihilate Jade Druid initially is that Jade Druid's primary win condition wasn't actually Jade Idol. The deck was a tempo deck that had a late game infinite value engine if needed. Maybe 1 game in 10 for the deck went deep enough that Idols became crucial, otherwise the tempo components of the deck won out as they were intended to. Very different from how complete armor removal would simply invalidate any sort of control or fatigue warrior's gameplan. Maly Druid might be able to weather it, but that's similar to the Geist case where the tech was removing an ancillary strength rather than the deck's core.
Again, I think armor techs will come eventually, and they'll be healthy, but they certainly shouldn't be something like "Remove Your Opponent's Armor." That's pretty much the definition of a toxic, feel-bad mechanic in that it invalidates everything you've already done in a game (as opposed to something like Geist that might cripple you but at least it doesn't make your prior actions irrelevant). I'd be cool with something along the lines of "Deal Double Damage to Armor," or "Deal Half Damage to Armor, Half to Health," or something else of that nature, but giving a hard tech against something that is fundamentally super interactable already is a bit off-base in my mind.
The big difference between weapon or secret removal & complete armor removal is more staggering than what you're giving credit to OP.
With weapon removal the opponent has only committed one turn setting that up, with the one notable exception of Kingsbane Rogues. Secrets generally have had 2-3 turns committed to setting up secrets when secret tech removes them (totally anywhere from 0-9 mana across those turns).
Armor removal obliterating all armor gains is much more ridiculously OP than either of those considering it would most likely be used on a druid, warrior, or even control mage who has amassed armor gain for many turns. Being on the very conservative side on this example let's say that this theoretical armor removal was used on the opponent after the opponent had spent 5 turns gaining armor. That means one tech card has removed 5 turn's worth of armor gain plays (totaling at least 10 mana, if not much much more).
We talk about hate for mana cheesing plays, yet this is almost mana cheese of a different type, mana cheesing how much mana you would actually need to use in order to obliterate the play of an opponent that fairly committed much more mana and many more turns than you needed to utterly counter that play. Would you consider a 2-6 mana pyroblast fair? If not, then how could you consider a tech that is essentially the same thing for armor gain classes fair?