Are the Gods Godlike?

babar3355

After grinding endlessly since the disastrous patch nearly 2 months ago I had managed to gather 1600 unobtanium.  After seeing the power of the new mechanic "indestructible", I was happy to deploy all of my hard earned unobtanium for these powerful creatures.  They have their issues and are not easy to activate, but they are very strong in certain situations.  Now I am told that these all powerful creatures are not actually immune to destroy spells like in paper magic.  Not only can they be disabled and removed as well as exiled (Vindicate took Rhonas down multiple time this event), but now we learn that they can be killed by literally anything except for creature damage? 

What in the name of all that is holy?  Was this D3's plan to remove my hoarded resources before they nerf them to awfulness?

Honestly guys... perhaps Kefnet needs to be nerfed in some other way to prevent the AI setting up a Kefnet/webs defense that is virtually unstoppable as it is really hard to control the AI's hand size.  However, Rhonas... kills the other creatures and he is useless, Hazoret - the AI never exiles down their hand.  Bantu - Not easily exploitable as you would have to kill your own creatures each turn.  Okerta - Kill his other creatures.

If you guys are going to put out godlike creatures in the Elite packs and then subsequently change the way the mechanic works to make the creatures barely playable, I really think you should offer players a refund of jewels.  This is really not a fair practice.  And I honestly don't think they need to be nerfed anyway.    (If you want to nerf them, make some exiling kill spells that aren't masterpiece grade).

shteev

Bounce beats everything anyway...

Phase

The mechanic is "Prevent Damage" and currently it's bugged to prevent destroy effects as well. 

The gods are getting nerfed as a result of that pending bugfix.

shteev

So... Cast Out is not a problem and everyone should have it at uncommon, but Mythics like Rhonas and Hazoret should be rubbish.

This really doesn't make any sense to me.

babar3355

Phase said:

The mechanic is "Prevent Damage" and currently it's bugged to prevent destroy effects as well. 

The gods are getting nerfed as a result of that pending bugfix.

The gods are indestructible in paper form... meaning prone to bounce, disable, exile.  Not effected by destroy. 

They literally changed how the mechanic worked back to how it used to be with Undergrowth Chamption.  So they intended for them to be indestructible.  They either did it as a permanent change or they intentionally screwed with people to milk them of their unobtanium.  You cant accidently redeploy a piece of code that you  have previously adjusted and then pretend it is a separate bug.

And why would exile work on these creatures?  Anyway, either they need to leave "prevent damage" to include destroy, or they need to refund many of us our jewels for wasting them on creatures they plan on nerfing.

Corn_Noodles

babar3355 said:
Anyway, either they need to leave "prevent damage" to include destroy, or they need to refund many of us our jewels for wasting them on creatures they plan on nerfing.

Or, you know, you could stop playing.

wereotter

The problem with the gods is that, unlike in paper magic, one god can block an entire army of opponent creatures. So, use Origins Gideon's first ability on Oketra, or put Mantle of Webs on Rhonas, and unless you're fortunate enough to pull Vindicate or Wrath of God, or happen to be playing a color that can disable the creature, you lose the match then and there. Which means if you're playing black, red, or green, you have no way to win.

I sympathize that it's disappointing these gods aren't quite so resilient as their paper counterparts, however, to make this game work, they kind of have to be.

Corn_Noodles

I would love some Deicide.

gruntface

1) 1,600 unobtanium!! Grats on accumulating such a vast hoarde of gems, that is really an impressive haul.
2) Unfortunately, as is always the case with this game, caveat emptor. Always.
3) When I started seeing them in the field of play they weren't particularly bothersome to deal with so have not yet splurged my far more insignificant stash of unobtanium on the current Elite Pack. I may be a fool, but I guess I am waiting for a little more value (strike that I am a fool as no currency increases in value in future releases, but heyho).
4) I agree with wereotter. If they were really as you had hoped, we would have had Runaway Carriage all over the place and that was the biggest break I've seen in my year or so playing the game. I have zero interest into seeing that in the new meta.

Phase

babar3355 said:

Phase said: 

The mechanic is "Prevent Damage" and currently it's bugged to prevent destroy effects as well. 

The gods are getting nerfed as a result of that pending bugfix.

The gods are indestructible in paper form... meaning prone to bounce, disable, exile.  Not effected by destroy. 

They literally changed how the mechanic worked back to how it used to be with Undergrowth Chamption.  So they intended for them to be indestructible.  They either did it as a permanent change or they intentionally screwed with people to milk them of their unobtanium.  You cant accidently redeploy a piece of code that you  have previously adjusted and then pretend it is a separate bug.

And why would exile work on these creatures?  Anyway, either they need to leave "prevent damage" to include destroy, or they need to refund many of us our jewels for wasting them on creatures they plan on nerfing.

They didn't call it Indestructible. They could have done that, but they didn't.

Use the Undergrowth Champion situation to puzzle this out. This is a card that was bugged in the past to ignore destroy effects. They adjusted it to behave as intended. Note that in the paper game that the card responds to damage dealt to it as well, and is easily killable by destroy effects. 

Now tap the funny icon on UC, Seraph of the Suns, the Gods, and creatures affected by Gideon's Intervention (you can do this in Training actually). "This creature takes no damage". Gideon's Intervention specifically mentions a damage replacement effect. Notice it is damage, damage, damage in all these references. Now consider again that UC used to prevent destroy as well and was fixed not to do this, then realize it has the same funny icon now! Just like Seraph of the Suns, the cards have a damage replacement effect. 

The only question left to answer, well why call it prevent damage and then make it actually indestructible in the game mechanics? To which I say, they have screwed this up before and they have screwed it up again. Old bugs pop up all the time in software development and D3 have a great track record of such behavior (to our chagrin of course). The other piece of that is I think they knew, like most of us, that actual Indestructibility on a creature in this game, in which you are limited to 3 creature slots at a time, is blatantly overpowered. Which is why we see the prevent damage language in the icon helper text. Now this is somewhat debatable given these people think Olivia and Baral 1.0 were balanced, but this will come down to a difference of opinion.

Given the above it seems obvious to me that prevent damage is bugged like it once was. No one is getting any jewels refunded. Google or Apple might refund you but as we saw with Baral anyone who spent money and/or jewels on the Gods in this masterpiece collection is going to get the same treatment- "too bad so sad".

Edit: also, and I think this is one of those philosophical razors on Wikipedia and I forget whose (Pelham?): Never attribute to malice that which can be attributed to stupidity. Or, in this case, incompetence. 

Thésée

babar3355 said:

Phase said:

The mechanic is "Prevent Damage" and currently it's bugged to prevent destroy effects as well. 

The gods are getting nerfed as a result of that pending bugfix.

The gods are indestructible in paper form... meaning prone to bounce, disable, exile.  Not effected by destroy. 

They literally changed how the mechanic worked back to how it used to be with Undergrowth Chamption.  So they intended for them to be indestructible.  They either did it as a permanent change or they intentionally screwed with people to milk them of their unobtanium.  You cant accidently redeploy a piece of code that you  have previously adjusted and then pretend it is a separate bug.

And why would exile work on these creatures?  Anyway, either they need to leave "prevent damage" to include destroy, or they need to refund many of us our jewels for wasting them on creatures they plan on nerfing.

Note that Undergrowth Champion is back in his indestructible form. I faced one in Training grounds and couldn't destroy it with Moon.

So it seems to me Phase is right and they tinkered something with prevent damage that makes the creature destroy - proof but it was not intended. It is a bug

I just pulled Rhonas out of a premium pack, I'm going back to play quickly to enjoy this indestructible status as much as I can !

Ohboy

Thésée said:

babar3355 said:

Phase said:

The mechanic is "Prevent Damage" and currently it's bugged to prevent destroy effects as well. 

The gods are getting nerfed as a result of that pending bugfix.

The gods are indestructible in paper form... meaning prone to bounce, disable, exile.  Not effected by destroy. 

They literally changed how the mechanic worked back to how it used to be with Undergrowth Chamption.  So they intended for them to be indestructible.  They either did it as a permanent change or they intentionally screwed with people to milk them of their unobtanium.  You cant accidently redeploy a piece of code that you  have previously adjusted and then pretend it is a separate bug.

And why would exile work on these creatures?  Anyway, either they need to leave "prevent damage" to include destroy, or they need to refund many of us our jewels for wasting them on creatures they plan on nerfing.

Note that Undergrowth Champion is back in his indestructible form. I faced one in Training grounds and couldn't destroy it with Moon.

So it seems to me Phase is right and they tinkered something with prevent damage that makes the creature destroy - proof but it was not intended. It is a bug

I just pulled Rhonas out of a premium pack, I'm going back to play quickly to enjoy this indestructible status as much as I can !

It's actually better than before now. It doesn't even get -1/-1 instead of being destroyed. It just stays the way it is.

Steeme

I have been using Kefnet the Mindful in the event, but not as a blocker (using Dovin).  It is underwhelming on its own but right now it is able to absorb Chain Lightning and the Trial of Zeal direct damage which the AI continuously spams.  As long as I keep its power above Baral the AI will keep targeting it, so it at least has its use.

majincob

They tried to simplify a game that relies on nuanced complexity to create balanced interesting interactions.

In paper magic there are multiple different ways to deal with creatures: destroy, damage (combat, direct damage, fight), bounce, exile, -x/-x, counterspells, can't attack/block, creature deals no damage, and blocking.

Then there are abilities that protect creatures from those things like flying, indestructable, hexproof, trample, damage prevention, unblockable, menace, etc.

Each of those abilities counteract some of the threats against it but not all, and all of the potential answers are readily available across all rarities and all colors have some answer.

IMO, since they introduced the exile mechanic they should add the indestructable keyword instead of trying to shoe-horn it onto damage prevention since indestructable means more than just prevent damage (the original destroy code in the game was just deal damage=toughness).

They should also increase the number of exile cards in lower rarities possibly through changing older cards to match their paper counterparts.

Phase

I agree with exile in play we can explore indestructible as a thing. But it's not really on enough cards yet to just start jamming indestructible on 5 mythics in the set and rares too. Maybe someday we'll have a proper graveyard too!

babar3355

majincob said:

They should also increase the number of exile cards in lower rarities possibly through changing older cards to match their paper counterparts.

This is exactly correct.  They seem to have done it on purpose but subsequently not provided the answers that we need, mainly obtainable exile creature cards.

Here is my guess.  They will run out the gods with their indestructible strength.  They will sell Angel of Sanctions with the really powerful embalm effect this week. Then  they will then run vindicate in the next masterpiece package as a answer to the gods/embalm.  Once everyone else has spent their unobtanium they will roll out the next set of AKH cards which will include some high casting cost exile cards which will provide answers to the gods and embalm creatures. 

Anyone want to bet?

Phase

I still think they will bugfix prevent damage. It has very high visibility in the bugs area of this forum and it almost certainly is not working as intended.

That said the above could be true independent of all that. I still think rather than being a part of some masterminded evil plan to screw us out of $$, they just made a mistake. 

Amadeus

shteev said:

So... Cast Out is not a problem and everyone should have it at uncommon, but Mythics like Rhonas and Hazoret should be rubbish.

This really doesn't make any sense to me.

Rhonas  + Mantle of Webs is unstoppable 

babar3355

Amadeus said:

shteev said:

So... Cast Out is not a problem and everyone should have it at uncommon, but Mythics like Rhonas and Hazoret should be rubbish.

This really doesn't make any sense to me.

Rhonas  + Mantle of Webs is unstoppable 

Um, no.  You can kill his other creatures so he cant attack or block.  You can bounce him back to hand with disperse or anchor to the aether.  You can disable him in white, blue, or any color with deadlock trap and then kill him with destroy spells.

Oh, or you can give him -1/-1 counters to kill him.

Rhonas + mantle + Kefnet or GR... get you closer to unstoppable.. but still can be disabled or bounced.

shteev

babar3355 said:

Amadeus said:

shteev said:

So... Cast Out is not a problem and everyone should have it at uncommon, but Mythics like Rhonas and Hazoret should be rubbish.

This really doesn't make any sense to me.

Rhonas  + Mantle of Webs is unstoppable 

Um, no.  You can kill his other creatures so he cant attack or block.  You can bounce him back to hand with disperse or anchor to the aether.  You can disable him in white, blue, or any color with deadlock trap and then kill him with destroy spells.

Oh, or you can give him -1/-1 counters to kill him.

Rhonas + mantle + Kefnet or GR... get you closer to unstoppable.. but still can be disabled or bounced.

You don't even need to go up to rare cards like SBonds and DWave or Harbinger to stop Rhonas. Winds of Rebuke costs 4 mana. I hear Cast Out is good, too. Alchemist's Vial is still a card that exists. Try Ruthless Sniper! Cycling is crazy broken, after all! Although why you'd bother with the Sniper and not just go straight for Faith of the Devoted and kill your opponent, I'm not sure.

Honestly, If you can't deal with a Rhonas, then you're not going to be able to compete at Platinum Tier. If you're not AT Platinum level, and you think it's unfair that you should be playing against Mythic creatures like Rhonas that are way above your personal power level while you're only Silver or Bronze, then, well, I agree with that.

wereotter

shteev said:

babar3355 said:

Amadeus said:

shteev said:

So... Cast Out is not a problem and everyone should have it at uncommon, but Mythics like Rhonas and Hazoret should be rubbish.

This really doesn't make any sense to me.

Rhonas  + Mantle of Webs is unstoppable 

Um, no.  You can kill his other creatures so he cant attack or block.  You can bounce him back to hand with disperse or anchor to the aether.  You can disable him in white, blue, or any color with deadlock trap and then kill him with destroy spells.

Oh, or you can give him -1/-1 counters to kill him.

Rhonas + mantle + Kefnet or GR... get you closer to unstoppable.. but still can be disabled or bounced.

You don't even need to go up to rare cards like SBonds and DWave or Harbinger to stop Rhonas. Winds of Rebuke costs 4 mana. I hear Cast Out is good, too. Alchemist's Vial is still a card that exists. Try Ruthless Sniper! Cycling is crazy broken, after all! Although why you'd bother with the Sniper and not just go straight for Faith of the Devoted and kill your opponent, I'm not sure.

Honestly, If you can't deal with a Rhonas, then you're not going to be able to compete at Platinum Tier. If you're not AT Platinum level, and you think it's unfair that you should be playing against Mythic creatures like Rhonas that are way above your personal power level while you're only Silver or Bronze, then, well, I agree with that.

Those are all solutions, yes, but what is your answer for someone playing Nissa, Koth, or Liliana running into these things? Do you really think you should tell someone with those decks to run Alchemist's Vial "just in case", and then hope you draw another copy of it every turn so you can keep that reach Rhonas disabled until you can kill it?

I agree that the gods should be powerful, but there's also a point at which they need to be adjusted in order to make it possible to play against them with any color. I've suggested before that the best solution is a tradeoff. Make them indestructible, but also make it so they can't block ever.