Has Prevent Damage Change

ReddMaxx

I believe prevent damage has changed. I cast Enshrouding Mist on a creature and a destroy spell killed it. It didn't use to work that way.

I believe they changed the way prevent damage worked so UC is now effected by it. Instead of doing damage equal to toughness they just destroy the card.

So can anyone verify that prevent damage creatures are destroyed with destroyed effects and is this the way prevent damage is meant to be from now on.


Redd

Morphis

I predicted(and asked about it) that the change to UC could lead to a rework of prevent damage.

People claim this to be the case. Creatures with Prevent damage can now be killed by spells that destroy creatures.
Deathtouch does not kill prevent damage cause for it to work it needs to deal damage.
Since damage is prevented death touch does not work in this case.

ReddMaxx

That answers the first part. But is the concept of prevent damage suppose to stop destroying effects or was that never meant to be.

Redd

Morphis

ReddMaxx wrote:

That answers the first part. But is the concept of prevent damage suppose to stop destroying effects or was that never meant to be.

Redd

It was never actually meant to be.

It had more to do with how they coded it in the game.
Basically it was accomplished by "deal damage to the creature equal to its thoughness".
That gave most of the time the same result until UC came(prevent damage being the only exception and anyways provided only by one card temporarily).

Undergrowth champion was meant to get -1/-1 when dealt damage.
Since destroy was implemented trough dealing damage, UC did not die.

So they chose to update description instead of changing destroy effect coding.
Then people started abusing UC.
To fix it they had no choice but to "fix" the way destroy effect work.

This change naturally spread on all the game making prevent damage no longer immune to destroy(since destroy no longer deals damage to kill).

That's the long story

alextfish

Yow. That's... well, OK, Enshrouding Mist was pretty powerful before, so I guess it's fair enough.

But it'd've been really nice if they'd actually mentioned this change in the behaviour of our cards anywhere in any patch notes or release announcement

Pqmtg-

alextfish wrote:

Yow. That's... well, OK, Enshrouding Mist was pretty powerful before, so I guess it's fair enough.

But it'd've been really nice if they'd actually mentioned this change in the behaviour of our cards anywhere in any patch notes or release announcement

It's pretty much just a bug fix.

GrizzoMtGPQ

This should have been announced better. Prevent Damage is a core feature. This was not a bug fix but a significant change to a game mechanic.

Plastic

Weird... I tested Tragic Arrogance with Runaway Carriage recently. While having RC and 2 other creatures on my side, I'd use TA and choose one of the other 2 creatures (not RC) on my side and of course the opposing creature to be spared. The result? RC survived WITH my initially chosen creature.

So some things aren't quite hammered out with prevent damage. Maybe because RC has its own built in prevent damage? Who knows.

shteev

This should definitely have been announced better when I've just spent £30 on Avacyn. I'm not unhappy with my purchase, and I'm paying for the game itself as much as a single card, but people who spend money should really know what they are buying.

Pqmtg-

GrizzoMtGPQ wrote:

This should have been announced better. Prevent Damage is a core feature. This was not a bug fix but a significant change to a game mechanic.

Prevent damage should never have prevented non damage creature removal. It makes absolutely no sense. That was definitely a bug people used to their advantage, and not a core mechanic.

This is like saying playing the cards that freeze your opponents games is a core mechanic. Your strategy should not be revolving around abusing bugs.

alextfish

It makes no sense, *except* that cards which in paper MtG grant the keyword "indestructible" have been translated into MTGPQ cards which grant the pseudo-keyword "prevent damage". (Such as, for example, Archangel Avacyn.) And obviously MtG indestructible *does* prevent "destroy" effects from killing the affected permanent.

So I for one had been assuming for months that "prevent damage" is just a bad choice of name for MTGPQ's keyword that should really be called "indestructible". Now, suddenly, the behaviour of cards which I think of as granting "indestructible" no longer work the way that (a) they always have done, and (b) the way their paper-Magic equivalents do.

shteev

Pqmtg- wrote:

GrizzoMtGPQ wrote:

This should have been announced better. Prevent Damage is a core feature. This was not a bug fix but a significant change to a game mechanic.

Prevent damage should never have prevented non damage creature removal. It makes absolutely no sense.

Neither does hexproof preventing effects to your opponent's 'First Creature' when it's clearly an untargetted effect. And that's not a bug, they've deliberately added new code in there recently to make the effect skip over to the first non-hexproof creature.

Things make sense in this game if and only if they dev team decide that they do. Hexproof and Disabled have worked the same way for a considerable amount of time, and this board was not inundated with requests to change the way it worked; only with requests for information about how they worked. What you think makes absolutely no sense, and what I think makes absolutely no sense, are purely subjective.