Complete armor removal is incredibly lazy counter play design practice. All it accomplishes it creating a type of tech card that increases the amount of polarizing counter queue match-ups. How can you make a compelling argument that that would be good for the game? Counter play should involve some degree of intelligence/strategy, not just playing a single card and instantly winning the game, or nearly doing this.
On to my next point, these arguments are often pushed by control players who want to turn unfavorable match-ups to 90/10 match-ups, or at least coin flips. Yet where are the Broken I Win Buttons against Gul'Dan, Jaina, Rexxar, or wild Kingsbane? Control wants all of these amazballs counters against their opponents, while ignoring the fact that their own control powerhouse cards/plays don't have polarized control mirror counters.
We already have ways that people can play a series of cards and win the game. It's just that different decks have different caps of damage they can unleash. Exodia mage has no cap, and neither does DK Uther yet most don't complain about those decks. Rin even lets you rid an opponent of their deck which is arguably more frustrating than losing all your armor. So while those decks and mechanics do more than what I'm asking for, they're okay for the game because their power level is balanced. If a balanced full armor removal could be created (set a Rin-like condition if you want), then there's no reason why this wouldn't be acceptable.
Do I want to turn unfavourable matchups into positive ones? Of course! Who doesn't want to do that? Who doesn't tech their decks to do better against decks they see more often? The intention of this card is to drastically improve the warrior/big spell mage/druid matchup for off-key combo decks. The mark of a good player is that they know how to adjust their deck to the meta to do better. But I never said that I wanted this to be an exclusive situation. Go ahead and design a tech card that changes your opponent's hero power, silences their weapon, or whatever the hell else you want to do to counter these decks. I welcome those additions to the game. I believe that there should be accessible counters for every type of deck. AND accessible counters to those counters. So while I may have a battlecry card that removes all your armor, you might have a secret that nullifies the next battlecry. Or a card that destroys a battlecry minion from my hand. You can't tell me that making these decisions about what cards to include and when to play these counter cards doesn't require skill. Lack of skill is copy and pasting the top deck and never questioning why any card is included. Nothing has to be an "I win" card as long as there are ways to prevent it or regain lost advantages. Perhaps you don't want the game to be this diluted or complex but that's just a difference of opinions.
Comparing a single anti-armor tech card that serves as an I-win card to a combo deck that may be entirely built around an instant win condition, or an incredibly slow win-more demon that costs over 25 mana to use is hardly a fair comparison. If you're going to build your entire deck around removing your opponent's armor or will pay the cost of massive tempo loss over multiple turns to remove armor then sure you can make such a comparison. Until then they are not in the same world of discussion. We're talking about one theoretical card that removes all of your opponent's armor with a battlecry.
The thing about unfavorable match-ups is that they are supposed to exist. Shocking I know. Way too many players don't seem to understand that these things are supposed to happen. Hell, even in mmorpgs the various classes/themes/roles are intentionally built around glaring strengths and weaknesses in the great rock-paper-scissors game based off of things like DnD and other such comparatively old 'relics' of gaming. Now I am obviously exaggerating this to a degree, and I am in noway am I saying that a control deck should always lose to a high armor class, but if you're playing a deck that doesn't try to kill your opponent and just tries to grind out their threats why shouldn't they struggle against non-minion resources like armor? So many players want control to be stripped of its weaknesses outside of aggro match-ups (such as wanting to nerf 'infinite value', otks, or massive armor gain). Seeing a trend here? I have yet to see an impressive argument from anyone here why a complete armor removal tech would be more beneficial than harmful for the game overall. All it seems like is a circle jerk of trying to make control a busted jack-of-all-trades playstyle that only has weakness to aggro pressure (and even that is being argued against).
Lol saying I don't want the game to be complex. I never once implied that. However, your vision for making the game complex by requiring players to be lucky enough in draw rng to have counters against counters against counters the precise moment the first player uses a counterable card isn't going to end up as smoothly as you are explaining. Say that we do get a remove all armor battlecry and then in response create a secret or a minion that activates from hand to cancel the next battlecry played. That still requires the second player to actually have such a counter resource in hand or on the board for that "complex" exchange to occur. If that doesn't happen then all you end up with is a match-up similar to what Jade Druid looked like when an opponent didn't draw geist early enough to matter. How exactly then is your proposal going to make the game more complex when introducing an all armor counter? You end up with a warrior or a druid getting hard countered and lost because they weren't lucky enough to counter the deck's/class' 'crab counter'.
As long as DK Uther exists in the game with its current effect, no effect is too strong for the game. DK Uther is a "remove all armor and all health" card so I'll hold on hope that there could be a balanced armor removal card just like there is a balanced "win the game" card.
And Uther costs multiple turns of setting up (if doing it the traditional OTK method) or simply two mana every turn until the opponent can't remove a horseman.
As long as DK Uther exists in the game with its current effect, no effect is too strong for the game. DK Uther is a "remove all armor and all health" card so I'll hold on hope that there could be a balanced armor removal card just like there is a balanced "win the game" card.
And Uther costs multiple turns of setting up (if doing it the traditional OTK method) or simply two mana every turn until the opponent can't remove a horseman.
Then make the armor tech cost multiple turns of setting up. Easy solution.
You cannot expect to be granted a massively powerful effect without a massive requirement to achieve it, that is just an unbalanced card.
And herein lies the misunderstanding. I've never expected that. Blizz can go ahead and give a massive requirement for removing all armor if that is what is required to make it balanced. I've said in every one of my threads that a Rin-like requirement is perfectly fine if it means that the effect doesn't get neutered. Would I prefer it to be merely a battlecry? Sure. Do I think that the effect is balanced enough that it could be listed as just a battlecry. Yes. But I'm willing to admit my judgment with balance isn't perfect and that more of a restriction might be necessary.
An invincible deck would require 100% in all matchups. This would be impossible to achieve no matter what. Any tech card that improves one matchup will lower another. If you think that an armor removal card would make every OTK deck invincible, you're mistaken. In fact, the biggest struggle for OTK decks is often aggro, not control. I'm just saying that I would be willing to bring some matchups down (even to the point of them being unfavourable) if it means that an unwinnable matchup becomes winnable if I play right. Take Fatigue Warrior vs. Jade Druid for example. Unless something goes miserably wrong, the warrior has no chance to win. But add in geist and the matchup becomes winnable. Far from 100% but winnable now. That's what this tech card is like.
But blizzard have proved that they are very willing to print a card which through sheer brute force completely destroys an archetype.
Skulking Geist was obviously never explicitly stated to be a direct hard counter to Jade Idol, but it was released I believe in the following expansion after we had had months of jade Druid being continuously and highly oppressive.
Except that it didn't actually hard counter jades. Jade decks were still able to operate and be strong even when Skulking was around. Turns out they didn't NEED to go infinite with Idols since they could still get to 12/12+ with the tools they had. Skulking was also so clunky that it was just a bad card at the time. Interestingly, it's actually seeing a lot more play after Jades went away.
Flare vs Freeze mage in 2014 is a much better example of a hard counter as that card in hunter literally made freeze mage unplayable. As a result, Blizzard nerfed Flare to 1 mana making it far too bad a card to use outside of freeze mage and, thus, made the care unusable anywhere. Similar anti-secret cards turned out to be utterly useless in any meta.
Now if you want to, say, put in a 1/6 for 5 mana that wipes out half a warrior's armor then go ahead. We'll get a few folks going "YAY' at reveal, then a few "OMG rigged matchmaking. I never get warrior!" then the card will go away without any real use since the 1 game you wrecked a warrior with won't make the 4 games you lost due to the card worthwhile. But you did make another player hate the game more so.. yay.
Though really this IS a bit of just casual theorycrafting. Druid having massive armor is just stupid and Odd Warrior has been deemed as horribly polarizing, so I'm doubting Blizzard will keep supporting both mentalities, meaning both will be dead come 2020. OTOH, you aren't going to see them print a card that makes an entire deck style worthless when they JUST introduced a card to actually try to incorporate it into the game. Thus by the time the concept of anti-armor becomes viable, the reasons why it might be considered will be going away.
(unless someone actually believes that Healadin will be Tier S and need tech cards to stop :P)
I’ve thought this for a while, mainly because when I’m playing something like BSM the matchup vs Odd Warrior is just so horrible and always goes to fatigue where their armour makes them untouchable.
But I do prefer the idea of a tech card which gains stats subject to their armour or removes half of it, like say in the same manner that Alexstraza works with health, rather than full removal.
You’ve got a good argument and I’m not sure why people feel the need to say you’re being ‘salty’ or instantly hate on it.
As an aside, there is no greater feeling than coining Geist and then polymorphing hadronax or playing ooze to break skull. On the flip side, it fucking sucks when you tech for those matchups and don’t draw it In time. That’s the nature of tech cards eh?!
its absolutely beyond me how so many people here think armor removal tech is a good and fun idea. what are you? rank 50?
armor gain is not the main issue HS has recently. and btw do you guys think ending a game on turn 4-5 with zoo or odd pally is THE way to play the game? maybe its efficient for low rank laddering but it surely is not fun
I’ve thought this for a while, mainly because when I’m playing something like BSM the matchup vs Odd Warrior is just so horrible and always goes to fatigue where their armour makes them untouchable.
But I do prefer the idea of a tech card which gains stats subject to their armour or removes half of it, like say in the same manner that Alexstraza works with health, rather than full removal.
You’ve got a good argument and I’m not sure why people feel the need to say you’re being ‘salty’ or instantly hate on it.
As an aside, there is no greater feeling than coining Geist and then polymorphing hadronax or playing ooze to break skull. On the flip side, it fucking sucks when you tech for those matchups and don’t draw it In time. That’s the nature of tech cards eh?!
big spell mage should be favored against odd warrior...
its absolutely beyond me how so many people here think armor removal tech is a good and fun idea. what are you? rank 50?
armor gain is not the main issue HS has recently. and btw do you guys think ending a game on turn 4-5 with zoo or odd pally is THE way to play the game? maybe its efficient for low rank laddering but it surely is not fun
Are insults really the way to go here? Just because you find different things enjoyable with this game than others does not mean they're rank 50. And if you read anything that I've written, you would understand that a card like this was intended for combo/OTK. Nobody has once mentioned in this thread the desire for use in aggro decks.
I’ve thought this for a while, mainly because when I’m playing something like BSM the matchup vs Odd Warrior is just so horrible and always goes to fatigue where their armour makes them untouchable.
But I do prefer the idea of a tech card which gains stats subject to their armour or removes half of it, like say in the same manner that Alexstraza works with health, rather than full removal.
You’ve got a good argument and I’m not sure why people feel the need to say you’re being ‘salty’ or instantly hate on it.
As an aside, there is no greater feeling than coining Geist and then polymorphing hadronax or playing ooze to break skull. On the flip side, it fucking sucks when you tech for those matchups and don’t draw it In time. That’s the nature of tech cards eh?!
big spell mage should be favored against odd warrior...
That’s not the case in my experience. Odd warrior, especially with quest, is a tough game as if they’re good players they bide their time, remove your big threats in he late game and then smash your face for 8 every turn. Jaina obvs helps but 8 face burn or 4 armour gain (or any of the Boom powers) beats 1 ping to the face when there are no minions on the board.
If you feel they are too OP increase the cost or decrease the stats, the important is the effect.
Huffer: no.. just NO! At 1/1 it would still be NO. In a game that constantly gets complaints about the lack of interactivity, putting a minon that not only negates the main mechanic of an entire class but also eliminates one of the main interactable mechanics we have AND who's only real useful purpose is to go face in a combo is... NO!!
Kraken is actually on the opposite scale as it's just.. bad. Using your entire turn to do, at best, what Black Knight does to minions is not a worthwhile use of your mana. Meanwhile, if an opponent has enough armor to make knocking out 12 of it viable, they are going to have a good bit of health and probably a lot more armor, meaning unless you're bursting for a finishing move it's akin to ...
I'll put it this way: how often is pyroblasting an odd warrior with 40 armor helpful?
I guess that's my real stance on this. I'm not against a good card that interacts with armor anymore thanI am ANY good card that does ANYTHING to ANYTHING.
What I'm against is pretty much all of the suggestions that get put down when this discussion comes up and these two cards are perfect examples. The suggestions are either cards who's main purpose is to make people regret choosing Warrior to play with or it's an utterly useless card that just feels good because it has "FU armor" in the text.
Tech cards that create "You played this way, I WIN!" situations are BAD. That includes ones we had in the past as well which aren't as many as it seems. The 'kill your secrets' cards we had in the time of mage really were NOT good cards to have and were only acceptable because they were so horrible they were worthless. The crawlers were borderline given that they not only ate a card but also dropped a high powered minion for the stats: again they were only acceptable because they were so horrible to any other matchup that they weren't worth putting in your deck.
Geist is a better example as they tended to weaken, but not kill their target decks. Even jade decks could still win especially since they didn't 100% rely only on idol spam. The oozes are powerful but had a few catches: firstly the weapon user DID get a shot off, not rendering the hit weapon completely worthless (you get to trade one dead minion and the opponent playing a bad follow up card for one lost weapon), secondly the only deck that would utterly die if it had it's weapon eliminated gets a weapon that can't be completely removed in Kingsbane.
Make cards that don't destroy your win % vs non-armor decks and still gives odd warrior a lowered but still viable chance to win WHEN it's used (and "well they can win by not armoring up" won't do on a deck who's entire purpose IS to armor up).
We don't need more "I Win/lose depending on what class my opponent is" cards and we don't need "feels good to make but worthless in the real world" cards either.
Armour gain is not really an issue. The issue is usually not enough pressure in the midgame to counter the armor gain for those decks. The real problem with Druid right now isn't even the armour gain personally, it's the absurd amount of stall (Spreading Plague) and removal (1 mana Fireball a minion) they get to get to their late game. Odd Warrior isn't even an issue.
Armour gain is not really an issue. The issue is usually not enough pressure in the midgame to counter the armor gain for those decks. The real problem with Druid right now isn't even the armour gain personally, it's the absurd amount of stall (Spreading Plague) and removal (1 mana Fireball a minion) they get to get to their late game. Odd Warrior isn't even an issue.
Druid is that Vampire(half) that many people make: "all of the strenghs, none of the weaknesses". It ramps fast, stalls well, heals well, bursts well, draws well. Spreading is an ok card. Spreading isn't an ok card on a class with a powerful end game and healing. UI is not a BAD card. UI is a bad card in a class with insane ramp who used to have a problem with card draw after hyper ramping.
I'm guessing druid isn't being messed with because most of those strengths wash away come rotation leaving them back at the vulnerable ramp class. There's too much to nuke to get them back to normal now if you don't nuke the ramp and nuking the ramp ruins the class for years after next Spring. It's just a messy situation.
Odd Warrior is just polarizing since its' too reliable. I'm guessing Blizzard's goal is to make other warrior decks and slow decks in general more appetizing so that players become less willing to care about a deck that's mostly just good against aggro. It's one of those decks that's best as a fringe deck or a check against an over reliance of a particular archetype.
But even if they are problems (which can be very much argued) targetting the decks themselves rather than adding some even more polarizing and unfun cards into the mix.
Armor penetration was a real stat in WoW for a long time before they dumbed down the game and removed ArPen, hit %, expertise, etc. It should be considered, but very carefully. Full removal of armor seems broken to me, but perhaps introducing a class spell or neutral minion with an aura effect could work.
For example:
Spell "Serrated Blades" 2-mana "Damage this turn is 100% more effective against armor"
Minion "Armor Penetrator" (such creativity!) 2 attack, 2 hp with aura effect "All damage is 100% more effective against armor"
Full removal of armor = busted
Tech cards to help burn through armor = not busted at all
A card like 5 mana 3/4 battlecry: destroy all armor, heal both heroes for the amount of armor destroyed would be pretty fair. It'd be no more game changing than cards that were printed in the past. Kezan mystic can take your opponent's ice block and give it to yourself. Secret destruction singlehandledly won the game against mage's ice block since forever. I don't see why a tech card against a specific strategy is a bad thing. Those already exist.
A card like 5 mana 3/4 battlecry: destroy all armor, heal both heroes for the amount of armor destroyed would be pretty fair. It'd be no more game changing than cards that were printed in the past. Kezan mystic can take your opponent's ice block and give it to yourself. Secret destruction singlehandledly won the game against mage's ice block since forever. I don't see why a tech card against a specific strategy is a bad thing. Those already exist.
That's actually not a good comparison when you look at the value and/or tempo spent to build up the armor, versus what was put into setting up one or two secrets.
Say you strip a warrior of 20 armor, that could be anywhere up to 5+ turns worth of hero powers and/or cards spent building that up. That's 10+ mana that was spent over multiple turns, all stripped by a single card.
Now say we use Eater of Secrets or Kezan Mystic on 2 secrets. The mage lost 2 cards on 1-2 turns, and lost anywhere from 0-6 mana on those secrets. The warrior may or may not lose as much value from actual card value/advantage (since they could have used more hero powers than actual armor cards building up the armor, but the warrior lost more value in terms of mana spent). It is not a flat comparison between these two counters.
It's a bad thing because counter match-ups and counter queueing is already viciously polarized as it is. Complete armor removal that isn't hard to setup just serves to make HS even more of a coin flip game. "Sweet I won the rng coin flip I got matched into a class/deck that has a 'crab counter' for it? I win! If not, then crap you've wasted a card slot in your deck that will give you a bad mulligan or top deck."
A card like 5 mana 3/4 battlecry: destroy all armor, heal both heroes for the amount of armor destroyed would be pretty fair. It'd be no more game changing than cards that were printed in the past. Kezan mystic can take your opponent's ice block and give it to yourself. Secret destruction singlehandledly won the game against mage's ice block since forever. I don't see why a tech card against a specific strategy is a bad thing. Those already exist.
Kezan doing that WAS a bad thing. We accepted it because it was such a bad card that no one could actually use it. I've seen folks try: they just died to all of the non-freeze-mage decks do to effectively having a dead card in hand all game.
When we DID have a secret killing card that was competitive, it was 0 mana Flare held by hunters. They COULD use it since it wasn't too damaging to have a free cantrip vs other decks. Meanwhile it meant the freeze mage could literally just concede instead of fighting against them.
It was horrible. And it resulted in Flare being nerfed to 1 mana, which made it, again, a bad card to use even when freeze mage was in the meta.
Secret hate cards were all either unusable in any real setting or nerfed to become unusable in any real setting. So we DIDN'T really accept cards that single highhandedly won the game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
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Comparing a single anti-armor tech card that serves as an I-win card to a combo deck that may be entirely built around an instant win condition, or an incredibly slow win-more demon that costs over 25 mana to use is hardly a fair comparison. If you're going to build your entire deck around removing your opponent's armor or will pay the cost of massive tempo loss over multiple turns to remove armor then sure you can make such a comparison. Until then they are not in the same world of discussion. We're talking about one theoretical card that removes all of your opponent's armor with a battlecry.
The thing about unfavorable match-ups is that they are supposed to exist. Shocking I know. Way too many players don't seem to understand that these things are supposed to happen. Hell, even in mmorpgs the various classes/themes/roles are intentionally built around glaring strengths and weaknesses in the great rock-paper-scissors game based off of things like DnD and other such comparatively old 'relics' of gaming. Now I am obviously exaggerating this to a degree, and I am in noway am I saying that a control deck should always lose to a high armor class, but if you're playing a deck that doesn't try to kill your opponent and just tries to grind out their threats why shouldn't they struggle against non-minion resources like armor? So many players want control to be stripped of its weaknesses outside of aggro match-ups (such as wanting to nerf 'infinite value', otks, or massive armor gain). Seeing a trend here? I have yet to see an impressive argument from anyone here why a complete armor removal tech would be more beneficial than harmful for the game overall. All it seems like is a circle jerk of trying to make control a busted jack-of-all-trades playstyle that only has weakness to aggro pressure (and even that is being argued against).
Lol saying I don't want the game to be complex. I never once implied that. However, your vision for making the game complex by requiring players to be lucky enough in draw rng to have counters against counters against counters the precise moment the first player uses a counterable card isn't going to end up as smoothly as you are explaining. Say that we do get a remove all armor battlecry and then in response create a secret or a minion that activates from hand to cancel the next battlecry played. That still requires the second player to actually have such a counter resource in hand or on the board for that "complex" exchange to occur. If that doesn't happen then all you end up with is a match-up similar to what Jade Druid looked like when an opponent didn't draw geist early enough to matter. How exactly then is your proposal going to make the game more complex when introducing an all armor counter? You end up with a warrior or a druid getting hard countered and lost because they weren't lucky enough to counter the deck's/class' 'crab counter'.
And Uther costs multiple turns of setting up (if doing it the traditional OTK method) or simply two mana every turn until the opponent can't remove a horseman.
What's the downside for decks and/or classes that can't or don't care about gaining armor?
Then make the armor tech cost multiple turns of setting up. Easy solution.
And herein lies the misunderstanding. I've never expected that. Blizz can go ahead and give a massive requirement for removing all armor if that is what is required to make it balanced. I've said in every one of my threads that a Rin-like requirement is perfectly fine if it means that the effect doesn't get neutered. Would I prefer it to be merely a battlecry? Sure. Do I think that the effect is balanced enough that it could be listed as just a battlecry. Yes. But I'm willing to admit my judgment with balance isn't perfect and that more of a restriction might be necessary.
An invincible deck would require 100% in all matchups. This would be impossible to achieve no matter what. Any tech card that improves one matchup will lower another. If you think that an armor removal card would make every OTK deck invincible, you're mistaken. In fact, the biggest struggle for OTK decks is often aggro, not control. I'm just saying that I would be willing to bring some matchups down (even to the point of them being unfavourable) if it means that an unwinnable matchup becomes winnable if I play right. Take Fatigue Warrior vs. Jade Druid for example. Unless something goes miserably wrong, the warrior has no chance to win. But add in geist and the matchup becomes winnable. Far from 100% but winnable now. That's what this tech card is like.
Paladins new priestess legendary means this thread is entirely pointless until rastakhan rotates. Make a new thread in a year or so
Except that it didn't actually hard counter jades. Jade decks were still able to operate and be strong even when Skulking was around. Turns out they didn't NEED to go infinite with Idols since they could still get to 12/12+ with the tools they had. Skulking was also so clunky that it was just a bad card at the time. Interestingly, it's actually seeing a lot more play after Jades went away.
Flare vs Freeze mage in 2014 is a much better example of a hard counter as that card in hunter literally made freeze mage unplayable. As a result, Blizzard nerfed Flare to 1 mana making it far too bad a card to use outside of freeze mage and, thus, made the care unusable anywhere. Similar anti-secret cards turned out to be utterly useless in any meta.
Now if you want to, say, put in a 1/6 for 5 mana that wipes out half a warrior's armor then go ahead. We'll get a few folks going "YAY' at reveal, then a few "OMG rigged matchmaking. I never get warrior!" then the card will go away without any real use since the 1 game you wrecked a warrior with won't make the 4 games you lost due to the card worthwhile. But you did make another player hate the game more so.. yay.
Though really this IS a bit of just casual theorycrafting. Druid having massive armor is just stupid and Odd Warrior has been deemed as horribly polarizing, so I'm doubting Blizzard will keep supporting both mentalities, meaning both will be dead come 2020. OTOH, you aren't going to see them print a card that makes an entire deck style worthless when they JUST introduced a card to actually try to incorporate it into the game. Thus by the time the concept of anti-armor becomes viable, the reasons why it might be considered will be going away.
(unless someone actually believes that Healadin will be Tier S and need tech cards to stop :P)
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
I’ve thought this for a while, mainly because when I’m playing something like BSM the matchup vs Odd Warrior is just so horrible and always goes to fatigue where their armour makes them untouchable.
But I do prefer the idea of a tech card which gains stats subject to their armour or removes half of it, like say in the same manner that Alexstraza works with health, rather than full removal.
You’ve got a good argument and I’m not sure why people feel the need to say you’re being ‘salty’ or instantly hate on it.
As an aside, there is no greater feeling than coining Geist and then polymorphing hadronax or playing ooze to break skull. On the flip side, it fucking sucks when you tech for those matchups and don’t draw it In time. That’s the nature of tech cards eh?!
There is only my justice now
its absolutely beyond me how so many people here think armor removal tech is a good and fun idea. what are you? rank 50?
armor gain is not the main issue HS has recently. and btw do you guys think ending a game on turn 4-5 with zoo or odd pally is THE way to play the game? maybe its efficient for low rank laddering but it surely is not fun
big spell mage should be favored against odd warrior...
Here I made two cards with kind of techs that could be implemented to counter Armor (and Taunt is Cheat so why not too xD)
Shadow Huffer
Corrupted Kraken
If you feel they are too OP increase the cost or decrease the stats, the important is the effect.
Everybody knows that...
https://hearthcards.ams3.digitaloceanspaces.com/ce/c0/bc/8a/cec0bc8a.png
Are insults really the way to go here? Just because you find different things enjoyable with this game than others does not mean they're rank 50. And if you read anything that I've written, you would understand that a card like this was intended for combo/OTK. Nobody has once mentioned in this thread the desire for use in aggro decks.
For Lordoron!
There is only my justice now
That’s not the case in my experience. Odd warrior, especially with quest, is a tough game as if they’re good players they bide their time, remove your big threats in he late game and then smash your face for 8 every turn. Jaina obvs helps but 8 face burn or 4 armour gain (or any of the Boom powers) beats 1 ping to the face when there are no minions on the board.
There is only my justice now
Huffer: no.. just NO! At 1/1 it would still be NO. In a game that constantly gets complaints about the lack of interactivity, putting a minon that not only negates the main mechanic of an entire class but also eliminates one of the main interactable mechanics we have AND who's only real useful purpose is to go face in a combo is... NO!!
Kraken is actually on the opposite scale as it's just.. bad. Using your entire turn to do, at best, what Black Knight does to minions is not a worthwhile use of your mana. Meanwhile, if an opponent has enough armor to make knocking out 12 of it viable, they are going to have a good bit of health and probably a lot more armor, meaning unless you're bursting for a finishing move it's akin to ...
I'll put it this way: how often is pyroblasting an odd warrior with 40 armor helpful?
I guess that's my real stance on this. I'm not against a good card that interacts with armor anymore thanI am ANY good card that does ANYTHING to ANYTHING.
What I'm against is pretty much all of the suggestions that get put down when this discussion comes up and these two cards are perfect examples. The suggestions are either cards who's main purpose is to make people regret choosing Warrior to play with or it's an utterly useless card that just feels good because it has "FU armor" in the text.
Tech cards that create "You played this way, I WIN!" situations are BAD. That includes ones we had in the past as well which aren't as many as it seems. The 'kill your secrets' cards we had in the time of mage really were NOT good cards to have and were only acceptable because they were so horrible they were worthless. The crawlers were borderline given that they not only ate a card but also dropped a high powered minion for the stats: again they were only acceptable because they were so horrible to any other matchup that they weren't worth putting in your deck.
Geist is a better example as they tended to weaken, but not kill their target decks. Even jade decks could still win especially since they didn't 100% rely only on idol spam. The oozes are powerful but had a few catches: firstly the weapon user DID get a shot off, not rendering the hit weapon completely worthless (you get to trade one dead minion and the opponent playing a bad follow up card for one lost weapon), secondly the only deck that would utterly die if it had it's weapon eliminated gets a weapon that can't be completely removed in Kingsbane.
Make cards that don't destroy your win % vs non-armor decks and still gives odd warrior a lowered but still viable chance to win WHEN it's used (and "well they can win by not armoring up" won't do on a deck who's entire purpose IS to armor up).
We don't need more "I Win/lose depending on what class my opponent is" cards and we don't need "feels good to make but worthless in the real world" cards either.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Armour gain is not really an issue. The issue is usually not enough pressure in the midgame to counter the armor gain for those decks. The real problem with Druid right now isn't even the armour gain personally, it's the absurd amount of stall (Spreading Plague) and removal (1 mana Fireball a minion) they get to get to their late game. Odd Warrior isn't even an issue.
Druid is that Vampire(half) that many people make: "all of the strenghs, none of the weaknesses". It ramps fast, stalls well, heals well, bursts well, draws well. Spreading is an ok card. Spreading isn't an ok card on a class with a powerful end game and healing. UI is not a BAD card. UI is a bad card in a class with insane ramp who used to have a problem with card draw after hyper ramping.
I'm guessing druid isn't being messed with because most of those strengths wash away come rotation leaving them back at the vulnerable ramp class. There's too much to nuke to get them back to normal now if you don't nuke the ramp and nuking the ramp ruins the class for years after next Spring. It's just a messy situation.
Odd Warrior is just polarizing since its' too reliable. I'm guessing Blizzard's goal is to make other warrior decks and slow decks in general more appetizing so that players become less willing to care about a deck that's mostly just good against aggro. It's one of those decks that's best as a fringe deck or a check against an over reliance of a particular archetype.
But even if they are problems (which can be very much argued) targetting the decks themselves rather than adding some even more polarizing and unfun cards into the mix.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.
Armor penetration was a real stat in WoW for a long time before they dumbed down the game and removed ArPen, hit %, expertise, etc. It should be considered, but very carefully. Full removal of armor seems broken to me, but perhaps introducing a class spell or neutral minion with an aura effect could work.
For example:
Spell "Serrated Blades" 2-mana "Damage this turn is 100% more effective against armor"
Minion "Armor Penetrator" (such creativity!) 2 attack, 2 hp with aura effect "All damage is 100% more effective against armor"
Full removal of armor = busted
Tech cards to help burn through armor = not busted at all
A card like 5 mana 3/4 battlecry: destroy all armor, heal both heroes for the amount of armor destroyed would be pretty fair. It'd be no more game changing than cards that were printed in the past. Kezan mystic can take your opponent's ice block and give it to yourself. Secret destruction singlehandledly won the game against mage's ice block since forever. I don't see why a tech card against a specific strategy is a bad thing. Those already exist.
S39 Legend - Quest Rogue, S38 Legend - Murloc Paladin, S37 Legend - Miracle Rogue, S36 Top 200 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S35 - Finished Rank 51 Legend - Aggro Shaman, S34 Legend - Aggro Shaman
That's actually not a good comparison when you look at the value and/or tempo spent to build up the armor, versus what was put into setting up one or two secrets.
Say you strip a warrior of 20 armor, that could be anywhere up to 5+ turns worth of hero powers and/or cards spent building that up. That's 10+ mana that was spent over multiple turns, all stripped by a single card.
Now say we use Eater of Secrets or Kezan Mystic on 2 secrets. The mage lost 2 cards on 1-2 turns, and lost anywhere from 0-6 mana on those secrets. The warrior may or may not lose as much value from actual card value/advantage (since they could have used more hero powers than actual armor cards building up the armor, but the warrior lost more value in terms of mana spent). It is not a flat comparison between these two counters.
It's a bad thing because counter match-ups and counter queueing is already viciously polarized as it is. Complete armor removal that isn't hard to setup just serves to make HS even more of a coin flip game. "Sweet I won the rng coin flip I got matched into a class/deck that has a 'crab counter' for it? I win! If not, then crap you've wasted a card slot in your deck that will give you a bad mulligan or top deck."
Kezan doing that WAS a bad thing. We accepted it because it was such a bad card that no one could actually use it. I've seen folks try: they just died to all of the non-freeze-mage decks do to effectively having a dead card in hand all game.
When we DID have a secret killing card that was competitive, it was 0 mana Flare held by hunters. They COULD use it since it wasn't too damaging to have a free cantrip vs other decks. Meanwhile it meant the freeze mage could literally just concede instead of fighting against them.
It was horrible. And it resulted in Flare being nerfed to 1 mana, which made it, again, a bad card to use even when freeze mage was in the meta.
Secret hate cards were all either unusable in any real setting or nerfed to become unusable in any real setting. So we DIDN'T really accept cards that single highhandedly won the game.
One does not simply walk into Mordor,
unless they want to be the best they can be.