[Official] Shard of Void | Shard of Void

[rockzo]

It's a permanent that does "damage" that can't be countered by any means of healing.
I'd say it's pretty good and doesn't need a buff   

[Asinickle]

In its current state, Shard of Void is seeing very little use in any sort of deck. Its application is similar to a 100% poison deck. Its advantage over poison is that it cannot be healed back, and it cannot be purified.
However, it suffers from its state of being a permanent, which allows it to be destroyed. But this is the least of its issues.
It has little to no synergy in elements. Its gradual but assured damage suggests it should be used in conjunction with stalling. Yet, its minimal damage and the necessity of protecting the shards by some means makes it unappealing in comparison to poison. SoV will do no more than 18 damage per turn. Poison can go beyond that if Arsenic or scorpions are used. (and they fit in with a stall deck just fine, due to SoSac, and not needing a permanent protector)
Furthermore, if damage is used in conjunction with SoV, SoV does little more than ensure that the damage sticks. It can act as a counter to healing decks. Then again, if the deck is using excessive healing, none of the damage from the creatures is sticking; just the SoV. So that doesn't really synergize. However, it does mean that eventually the creatures will be able to deal the opponent's new "maximum" hp in one turn. This means that the shard could be used to set up lower damage OTKs. But OTKs tend to be quick-draw based. They are also very chain-based, and drawing too many SoV's could wreck this chain. And fitting 100 hp into one turn isn't the fault of the OTK strategy anyways.
So then what CAN SoV be used for? It is harder to set up than poison, and has fewer uses in conjunction with other damage sources. If new cards are released that have interactions with the reduced maximum health, then SoV would be just fine. But in the current game, it is forced to be a stand-alone. And yet it is a very weak card, only dealing 3 damage per turn, which needs to be protected. Against False Gods you will deck out very often if you run 6 SoV as your damage source.

The way I see it, there are two different ways of handling this shard: bringing it into the realm of damage, where it can synergize with other damage, or strengthening it as a stand-alone.
If the shard reduces current and maximum health, it wouldn't be dead weight when used in conjunction with damage. When fighting against any deck without healing, the SoV would act as poison, and the creatures as damage. They would work in conjunction to bring the opponents current health to zero. And when fighting against a deck with excessive healing, the shards would allow the opponent's maximum health to be reduced to an OTK range for the user's creatures. The SoV may need to have a quanta cost nerf if this is the case, so that it is not strictly better than poison.
The other solution, increasing the shard's maximum health reduction, but also increasing the shard's cost, allows it to be used more effectively in a stall deck. It still would differ from poison stall decks in that the shard would be more quanta intensive, and require more cards to set up. (SoV stall would NOT work against the multitude of decks with explosion, SoF, steal, or pulverizor, if it did not include some sort of permanent protection.) It also will not work as well with SoSac, which is a major stall card. It would keep SoV as similar but different.

[OldTrees]

This has been one of if not the best opening post for one of these threads. You started with your concern that SoV was too weak to be of use to any deck. You then played devil's advocate by trying to find decks where it had some semblance of promise. You followed this with good reasons why SoV was not beneficial for those decks. Then you go in depth as to possible solutions showing the advantages of the solutions.
+102 rep for the high quality opening post especially since these threads tend to have low quality opening posts.


The main feature of Shard of Void is that when enchanted it can kill even the most invincible of stall decks. This advantage is rarely significant since invincible stall decks are inefficient in the EtG metagame. The closest being Mono Aether which is far from invincible. Since this feature is not significant and is unlikely to become significant as a result of slight changes of the card, I think modeling it as poison vulnerable to PC rather than healing is a good balance model. Both of the solutions listed in the OP (reduce max hp and current hp OR reduce more max hp) would fit this balance model.

[legion_bre]

Another option would be to make it immortal when played, thus removing the weakness of being a permanent open to being destroyed. Though I would tend to agree with OldTrees as these solutions being more prudent

Both of the solutions listed in the OP (reduce max hp and current hp OR reduce more max hp) would fit this balance model.

[Asinickle]

Another option would be to make it immortal when played, thus removing the weakness of being a permanent open to being destroyed. Though I would tend to agree with OldTrees as these solutions being more prudent

This actually wouldn't fix the issue. The issue is that shard of void deals damage over time that does not synergize with regular damage, but it is also too weak to justify building a stall deck around it.
Making it immaterial would make it easier to build a deck around, but the point still stands that its damage over time is too insignificant to justify that action.

Something I saw posted somewhere else also interested me: if SoV did spell damage, it could perhaps have its effectiveness increased without its quanta cost increased, as spell-reflecting shields would offer counterplay. As it stands now, there is no counterplay to a Protected stack of SoVs. (Aside from killing the person before 15 turns goes by.)

[Poker Alho]

maybe if it reduced hp for 1 more point if Nightfall/Eclipse was out, we could pottentially buff both SoV and Nightfall/Eclipse cards into something more useful than their current counterparts

[ColorlessGreen]

Another option would be to make it immortal when played, thus removing the weakness of being a permanent open to being destroyed. Though I would tend to agree with OldTrees as these solutions being more prudent

This actually wouldn't fix the issue. The issue is that shard of void deals damage over time that does not synergize with regular damage, but it is also too weak to justify building a stall deck around it.
Making it immaterial would make it easier to build a deck around, but the point still stands that its damage over time is too insignificant to justify that action.

Something I saw posted somewhere else also interested me: if SoV did spell damage, it could perhaps have its effectiveness increased without its quanta cost increased, as spell-reflecting shields would offer counterplay. As it stands now, there is no counterplay to a Protected stack of SoVs. (Aside from killing the person before 15 turns goes by.)

For what that's worth, Zen was a fairly effective plat farmer prior to 1.32, and when I've played around with it now, it's still quite effective any time you're not up against PC, but it's too difficult to keep PAs in the deck and still balance quanta. I'm almost certain that auto-immaterial would make Zen a very effective deck against gold/plat again. I would theorize it would be in the same ballpark as pdials and swallow against plat (though a lot of that is that it pretty much hard counters everything that hard counters pdials, which is much of what's in plat at any given time).

With that said, though, that'd mean that SoV would have one (granted quite effective) and only one use really, and I'd much prefer a solution that made it have uses across the board.

Something else I'd thought of which I haven't seen discussed is changing it to be something along the lines of "opponent cannot gain life while SoV is in play", which would more or less accomplish the thematic purpose of countering heal-spam while addressing most of the problems with it, but I'm not sure if I'd prefer that instead of any of the other options discussed.

Also, just to nitpick, the other counter (besides just winning before you die) to a stack of protected SoVs is stone skin/SoD.

[Hyroen]

Maybe have Shard of Void reduce enemy MaxHP (nodmg) and increase owner MaxHP (noheal), paralleling most of Darkness' cards, and increasing synergy with its vampiric cards.

[mega plini]

I think that the "Stallbreaker" component of the shard should not be underestimated. I admit that it isn't seeing much use in de pvp meta. That is why I would sugest unbanning it from future forum events. These events offer restrictions in deckbuilding, resulting in less powerfull decks. I think that SoV can hold his own in that meta and it would give us a better idea of the possibilities and synergies.

[Poker Alho]

I think that the "Stallbreaker" component of the shard should not be underestimated. I admit that it isn't seeing much use in de pvp meta. That is why I would sugest unbanning it from future forum events. These events offer restrictions in deckbuilding, resulting in less powerfull decks. I think that SoV can hold his own in that meta and it would give us a better idea of the possibilities and synergies.

if all the cards were properly balanced, there would only restrictions in pvp events regarding its theme, thus why i don't think unbanning SoV so we can use it on a pvp event is a valid argument to say SoV is not as underpowered as we might think so. We should try and balance it so it can hold its own in pvp1 and pvp2 metagame

[ColorlessGreen]

Maybe have Shard of Void reduce enemy MaxHP (nodmg) and increase owner MaxHP (noheal), paralleling most of Darkness' cards, and increasing synergy with its vampiric cards.

That is actually awesome and thematically just about perfect. It'd also mean that Zen-style SoV stall decks could more or less do away with SoDs.

[Asinickle]

For what that's worth, Zen was a fairly effective plat farmer prior to 1.32, and when I've played around with it now, it's still quite effective any time you're not up against PC, but it's too difficult to keep PAs in the deck and still balance quanta. I'm almost certain that auto-immaterial would make Zen a very effective deck against gold/plat again. I would theorize it would be in the same ballpark as pdials and swallow against plat (though a lot of that is that it pretty much hard counters everything that hard counters pdials, which is much of what's in plat at any given time).

With that said, though, that'd mean that SoV would have one (granted quite effective) and only one use really, and I'd much prefer a solution that made it have uses across the board.

Something else I'd thought of which I haven't seen discussed is changing it to be something along the lines of "opponent cannot gain life while SoV is in play", which would more or less accomplish the thematic purpose of countering heal-spam while addressing most of the problems with it, but I'm not sure if I'd prefer that instead of any of the other options discussed.

Also, just to nitpick, the other counter (besides just winning before you die) to a stack of protected SoVs is stone skin/SoD.

The thing is that Zen is going to be a lot weaker in the next patch, because SoSac is going to get nerfed. Stalling won't be as simple to do. It'll be much harder to effectively stall until someone dies, when SoV is your form of damage.
Making SoV disable health regen would be too odd. There are so many ways to heal yourself, it wouldn't be fair to counteract that with a single card.

Maybe have Shard of Void reduce enemy MaxHP (nodmg) and increase owner MaxHP (noheal), paralleling most of Darkness' cards, and increasing synergy with its vampiric cards.

This is brilliant. I think I like this more than my suggestions.