IMO Cloak could use a cost reduction.
I think the problem with Cloak is that three conditions have to be met at the exact same time for it to be worth the deck space.
1. Your opponent has to have control and be able to use it
2. You have to have something that is both weak to control and vital to your success
3. You have to have played Cloak
If these 3 things don't happen all at the same time, it was a waste putting Cloak in your deck. You might have Cloak and vulnerable creatures/permanents, but if your opponent has no control you wasted a draw and quanta playing it. If you see your opponent has control and you have Cloak up but nothing he would have wanted to target, again a waste of draw and quanta. If he has control and you have vulnerable and important stuff, but you weren't able to field Cloak in time, it was a waste. And if you ever stop chaining your cloaks, your opponent is free to spam all of his CC he's been saving yp.
It's usually pretty hard to tell exactly when you need to have Cloak up (lol maybe a Golden Nymph/Cloak deck?). This leads to situations where, in my experience, you want to have Cloak up early and constantly. Therefore, you have to put lots of Cloaks in your deck. What you get in game is a lot of hands bogged down with Cloaks that need quanta you can't afford to use on Cloak right then. In fact it's sometimes harmful, you playing Cloak to cover your stuff when your opponent has CC, just to avoid the situation where you get wrecked by control despite having Cloak in hand- and in doing so using valuable quanta that should have been used to play creatures earlier. A dangerous gamble to say the least.
Cloak also has numerous other weaknesses. Deflag. One card two fire quanta which can be used to instantly counteract the effects of Cloak instantly all by itself and is more versatile in any deck. What's more is that Deflag is a reactive card and Cloak is a predictive card without good ways of giving you information of when to play it. You have to play constant Cloaks to protect yourself from the one Deflag in his hand whereas he can play it at any time and instantly cancel your Cloak, allowing however much CC he likes to flood in at you? And Deflag is exactly the kind of card Cloak is meant to protect against. Steal is almost as bad, costing 4 darkness exactly the same as Cloak, which also being a reactive card. Even worse is repeatable perm control like Butterfly Effect and Pulverizer. Not only is using a Pulverizer ability on a Cloak cost less than the Cloak, but you aren't even losing any draws like the Cloaker.
If you don't get the reactive/predictive thing think of it like this. Instead of Deflagaration you have a card which destroys the next non-immaterial permanent your opponent plays, but only lasts for 3 turns and costs the same as Deflag. That's kind of shit. I mean I don't think that similar ways of achieving goals between different elements need to be exactly evenly matched, nor do I think that protection should be equal in strength to control, but you can see how much of a weakness Cloak has.
Now compare this with Quint, which allows you to protect your creature forever. For 4 Aether quanta. Stuff like Quint and Protect Artifact are so much more versatile than something like Cloak. You play it whenever you draw it and bamp, don't need to worry about that creature/perm anymore. Cloak does protect everything but when do you really need to protect everything? Generally there are just one or two key elements (pun not intended) of your deck that you must protect, like that Otyugh or that shield- but having a couple of Quints generally costs less than fielding the constant Cloak coverage you need and unlike Cloak is impervious to perm control and mass CC.
That said there are decks and situations where Cloak is very useful, more useful than Quint or Protect artifact. I'm not saying you can't use it to good effect. But just because you
can use a card doesn't mean the game couldn't benefit from that card receiving a buff (Think: Shroedinger's Cat, Purify, Butterfly Effect). It's the same as the way that just because a card or deck can be countered doesn't mean it's overpowered. A popular example of that would be the heated subject of Firestall (pun intended).
I think a 1
reduction to cost would be just fine.
PS: Apologize for the poorly structured post; it's late and I'm tired. I hope you can understand it all the same- though I'll try to revisit this subject if anyone takes the time to make a serious reply.
