[Official] Gravity Shield | Gravity Shield

[ColorlessGreen]

Add "removes airborne from all opponent's creatures while in play".

Unless I've forgotten something, effects it would have would be limited to:
(a) Countering SoFr/Sky Blitz
(b) Making Iridium Warden able to damage everybody

Basically, this change would help to reduce the dominance of SoFr in arena decks without actually directly nerfing SoFr, and would open up some interesting gimmicks with warden.

[Heric the Dark Lord]

Maybe...but this sounds more like "The card is balanced, but this would be cool, so it should be added" more than "This card is UP, and needs to be a little stronger" If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I say no on the buff, because though the Idea is good in idea, this card is powerful enough already, being able to stop most of the hard hitting cards, notably most of the dragons(One of the only way to stop Phase Dragon swarm decks.) If it counters more, it becomes meta, and overpowered, and then people will be complaining about nerfing the card.

[legion_bre]

I think it is a little underpowered if you compare it to some of the other elements shields. Consider the shields for 




These all result in an effective reduction of about 50% of damage.

Then we have the even more powerful shields: 

 

These have the potential to prevent all or almost all damage.

The  sign has no other shield to use and so is quite defenseless against most attacks by the vest majority of creatures which have less than 5hp. One idea could be to add that it reduces damage by 1 AND prevents monster over 5hp reaching. Or alternatively a new additional shield should be added to the  Mark.

[jsrjohnny]

I don't think this card needs changing. Most people do look at it and think "What kind of ninny effect IS this?" But if you examine Elite Otyugh, you notice a certain synergy the two have. And Otyugh is also a  card. So, to sum up, I think it's less about this card needing changes, and more about people needing to learn how to use it. Only creature I can think of that really defeats the Otyugh/Gravity Shield combo is Immortal, and that's only one card.

[mega plini]

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

I can't agree more. Buffing this card because another card (SoFree) would be too Prevalent in the arena, is just ridiculus.
Cards should be balanced to match with pvp, not pve

[ColorlessGreen]

Since I've been seeing this comment in a number of places, if balance changes should only apply to PvP, why is there a hard-coded limit of six on the number of SoSacs the AI will play? I'm pretty sure the rationale for that is that 12 sosacs is absurdly dominant in the arena.

It is absolutely worth balancing for arena, provided it can be done in a way that does not unbalance PvP. I do not consider "this is not unbalanced in PvP, therefore we should not touch it" to be a valid way to end a discussion, though I'm perfectly happy with it being a rationale for voting down a change. I'm also perfectly fine with a rationale of "coding time should be spent on balancing PvP rather than balancing arena", but since we're just discussing things and not actually providing zanz with a to-do list, I see no harm whatsoever in having a discussion about what's overpowered in arena, and to the extent that zanz takes his balancing suggestions from these subforums, I see no harm whatsoever in having him see "this is unbalanced in arena but not unbalanced in PvP" in the things he looks at.

To get back on topic, I consider the anti-airborne change to be most thematically appropriate for this card over any other card currently in existence, and I consider it more thematically appropriate to add to this card than it would be to add a new card that had a similar effect. Perhaps we need a new subforum called "buff this card that isn't underpowered but wouldn't be overpowered with a new, original effect" so we don't run into "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". If I've been misinterpreting the comments to this effect and people actually believe it would be overpowered with this new change, I apologize for the misunderstanding and just let me know.

[Vangelios]

 This shield is good, it does combo with Otyugh and BB

[mega plini]

I don't think that buffing this shield in the way that is proposed in this thread (removing airborne from creatures) will decrease the de So called domininance in the arena by Sofree. Why do I think that? Well mainly because the gravity shield just doesn't counter SoFree decks! If you remove airborne from their creatures, they can no longer critical strike, that is true. But you also won't block any of the normal damage comming trough, resulting in a loss anyway! and in every almost other matchup, it is a dead card anyway.

@ColorlessGreen: I don't think that the proposed buffs would make this card OP, on the contrarary, I believe they won't change anything.But I can't support "change cards just for the sake of changing them." that is why I don't apporve this buff.

I you are worried about the domincance of an archtype in the meta, you can allways use the tactics that the guys of MTG use to solve it.

Spoiler for Hidden:

if you are worried about Sofree, you should make an card that specificly counters that. Because, when everybody starts to play the deck, they will use the counter in order to win the mirrors. If they do that, their decks will become less useful against other strategies because the specific counter to Sofree is a dead card against other strategies and the problem will resolve itself

[ColorlessGreen]

Spoiler for Hidden:

I don't think that buffing this shield in the way that is proposed in this thread (removing airborne from creatures) will decrease the de So called domininance in the arena by Sofree. Why do I think that? Well mainly because the gravity shield just doesn't counter SoFree decks! If you remove airborne from their creatures, they can no longer critical strike, that is true. But you also won't block any of the normal damage comming trough, resulting in a loss anyway! and in every almost other matchup, it is a dead card anyway.

@ColorlessGreen: I don't think that the proposed buffs would make this card OP, on the contrarary, I believe they won't change anything.But I can't support "change cards just for the sake of changing them." that is why I don't apporve this buff.

I you are worried about the domincance of an archtype in the meta, you can allways use the tactics that the guys of MTG use to solve it.

Spoiler for Hidden:

if you are worried about Sofree, you should make an card that specificly counters that. Because, when everybody starts to play the deck, they will use the counter in order to win the mirrors. If they do that, their decks will become less useful against other strategies because the specific counter to Sofree is a dead card against other strategies and the problem will resolve itself

First of all, in addition to removing the critical strike, it (more importantly) also removes the complete immunity to CC, which is much more of an issue than the critical strike against double-draw decks. It would mean that gravy shield+oty or gravy shield+warden could become viable counters to mono-air without also having to deal with getting up to 12 pieces of PC, which could result in those two (relatively underused) strategies getting a bit more use.

Aside from the effects on mono-air, the other change would be to open up a new combo with iridium warden, like I said in the OP. This would not likely be an extremely strong combo, but it would create a nearly entirely new niche type of deck, and the more unusual niche decks that can exist, the more robust the game, IMO.

If a change can introduce a new element to the game (field-wide, non-permanent removal of airborne, which only overlaps slightly with single-target, permanent removal of airborne) without unbalancing anything else (which I do not believe this change would do) that would create a new combo, that is the reason for the change, not just change-for-changes'-sake.

With all that said, thank you very much for actually providing a rationale for why you do not support the change. A discussion is all I'm going for here, and it seems quite apparent that the community as a whole doesn't currently support the change, which I am totally fine with. The discussion is far more valuable than short statements about why we shouldn't even consider the change (i.e. "it doesn't help PvP" or "it isn't underpowered"). Also, I'm sorry that this came out as a reply to your post in particular. I have no desire to single you out in particular here - my comments are a reaction to having seen these arguments several times in several threads.

[mega plini]

The iridium warden combo with the gravity shield is (in my opinion) more fragile than you think. The shield would make it possible for the warden to damage all creatures, this is true. But the shield costs . Gravity doesn't provide any stat increasing spells to buff the warden. this means that, if you want to pull of the combo you will need to play at least a trio deck making quanta balance harder. I agree that it gives you a driffrent angle to approach the warden, but I'm not sure if it would actually improve the archtype.

I also hate short statements with no arguements. No offence taken

[ColorlessGreen]

The iridium warden combo with the gravity shield is (in my opinion) more fragile than you think. The shield would make it possible for the warden to damage all creatures, this is true. But the shield costs . Gravity doesn't provide any stat increasing spells to buff the warden. this means that, if you want to pull of the combo you will need to play at least a trio deck making quanta balance harder. I agree that it gives you a driffrent angle to approach the warden, but I'm not sure if it would actually improve the archtype.

I also hate short statements with no arguements. No offence taken

It's definitely fragile, but right now, the options are:
-warden+death spider+air to web+fourth element buff,
-warden+aether spider+air to web+fourth element buff, or
-warden+aether spider+air to web+SoW.

This would add the option of warden+gravy shield+third element buff, which is a trio, and every other current option besides SoW (which is also a trio) is at least a quad. The benefits of that option, as I see it, are:
-doesn't rely on shards,
-allows easy pulvy use,
-cuts down on the number of creatures you need to have in play in order for the warden to do their thing, and
-at a thematic level, lets you play an anti-air deck without having to use air.

There's already synergies in place between gravy/earth, gravy/entropy, and gravy/light - this change would mean new synergy for gravy/earth/entropy and gravy/earth/light. Gravy/earth/light in particular seems like it could put together a pretty nifty stall with this new change.

edit: less wall of text, more lists

[mega plini]

If you want to lower the dominance of SoFree in the arena, I think that there are more efficient ways to do that dan a fragile trio. Because it is highy unlikely that this deck is a reliable farmer, you can't use it against the arena. What is the point of making a counter against a deck that you will never play against? (at least not using your specific counter strategy, because you would lose a lot of )