Is anyone in agreement with me in totally not understanding what Zanz is doing with shards?
The original (3) Shards were put in as a way of providing abilities to the various colored decks, not anyway to heal to buy some time, gratitudes can help... etc.
Expanding on that idea, I believe it was stated, he wanted more shards, but with affinities. This way you can make more combinations, more duos, effective trios, etc.
The only thing, was he broke the game in many ways by making them overpowered. Shards of Sacrifice first came out, it made killing false gods a joke, I'm certain for that day or two before it got nerfed; a lot of people were mining false gods for virtually free upped cards. Part of me, regrets missing out, being unable to play consistently during those days. Same with when the revamped Shard of Readiness came out. After a while, one would see the same 4 or 5 decks over and ver again in Arena and PVP2, SoR being slightly nerfed for some combinations, still left us with things like Instotis; to keep causing havoc on the false gods. Then he leaves the game alone for far to long (other than a small patch).
So, what does he do? Next patch, he makes the Shards cost their affinities color. In effect, many Shards are no longer useful (As if Life didn't have enough ways to heal already?) or it does not address the problem (Shards of Freedom still make crazy high damage air decks, Shards of Wisdom were already limited to Aether by design anyways.)
Many of these cards were great concepts as colorless quanta cards to allow for balance across the elements. They needed tweaking a bit in concept and power.
Take Shard of Focus, it provided perm control of some sort to all elements, not just limited to two and a duo/rainbow using a pulvy. The problem was it was too much perm control for too cheap. The Shards should have provided a lowered powered version of it's ability, and a make equal if your mark matched. So, a Shard of Focus, should have been a 0/1 that died when you used it's ability, for a single destruction point for a cost of 3 colorless 2(if upgraded), then if your mark is gravity, then give it the ability to generate a black holes. This way, it's a bit of a lower powered destruction for all colors, giving the opponent time to counter, but also making it more useful for a gravity deck.
My suggestions were:
Shard of Wisdom, target creature's damage becomes spell damage, if mark is Aether, target gains Immortal attribute. (Immortal creatures are not targetable)
Shard of Void, keep as is.
Shard of Readiness: target creature's ability cost is reduced by 1, if mark is Time, target creature can use it's ability this turn or a 2nd time this turn. (no two times in on a turn if not previously used or just summoned just 1 time in that case)
Shard of Freedom, All airborne creatures gain a 25% chance to ignore opponents' shield. If mark is air, a 25% increase to damage as well (effect added up to 4 shards).
Shard of Divinity, keep as is.
Shard of Patience, creatures do not attack for one turn and gain +2/+2, +3/+3 if mark is water and +5/+5 if creature is in water, SoP is destroyed at your next draw.
Shard of Bravery, keep as is. (Alternatively, each creature gains +1/+0 for each creature in a slot on either of its' side).
Shard of Gratitude, heal for +3, heal all creatures +1 if your mark is Life
Shard of Integrity, keep mostly as is, but add the ability, if is Golem destroyed and mark is Earth, a Shard of Integrity is added back to your hand.
Shard of Focus, explained as above
Shard of Sacrifice, destroy one of your creatures, inflict damage to opponent equivalent to it's attack, if mark is Death, and heal equivalent to it's defense as well.
Shard of Serendipity, draw a random card from the middle of your deck, randomly generate one card in your hand, and if mark is Entropy generate an additional Entropy Card.
Of course, cost should be one to two more colorless the\an the base abilities' -1 if a hobble is in place, +1 if it creates cards as well. So a Shard of Bravery allows for a draw up to 3 cards like a Electrum hour glasses' ability which costs 1 time. But it's hobbled by allowing your opponent to draw cards too. So, this would be 3 + 2(1) - 1 or 4(3) colorless. Serendipity is a bit similar but less hobbled, it also generates two cards, so 3 + 2(1) + 1 so 6(5) colorless, shard of gratitude would be 3 + 2(1) or 5(4) colorless (plus or minus for final tweaking.)
This should generate the ability to make duos and trios, support rainbows, increase effectiveness of monos, without making too powerful of a Shard.
But then that's just me and I've already walked away once, it's not my game (meant in both ways.)
EDIT: As an aside, I always thought there should have been a Shard for for the Neutral Cards to make them more useful, called the Shard of Enchantment. Where it provides an additional ability to each of the neutral cards, it casts protect on the quanta towers, reflect ability on the tower shield, and each weapon get's upgraded to one of the rares. So the dagger becomes Vampire Dagger, the bow becomes an eagle's eye, etc... It provides an expensive but useful route to provide different elements access to abilities it would normally not have access too.
