[Official] Shard of Focus | Shard of Focus

[mega plini]

If you make it cost to much, rainbows will benefit to much instead of the duo's and mono's.

[OldTrees]

If you make it cost to much, rainbows will benefit to much instead of the duo's and mono's.

It will always suffer that fate because its power is so great. Nova makes designing an other card worth more than 5 troublesome.

[Guizonde]

maybe have its ability cost 3-4 unupped (like steal, deflag, or pulvy's ability) and one less upped? while keeping the limited use, of course. i just got stomped on by a SN bow with 6 of these (18 destructions for free), with an ability cost similar to traditional "destruction", i might have lasted one or two more turns.

[tyranim]

it still bugs me there isnt a poll

[Aneninen]

The more I think about it the more I'm sure that Shard of Focus is not a good concept at all.

All other Permanent Controls are bound to certain elements (       and  - did I miss something?). With this Shard, any deck can have a Permanent Control. Though it can be used limited times, same goes for Explosion, Earthquake and Steal, and these can be used only once. Though the Shard can be easily destroyed right after it's been played, after one use it's hard to get rid of it. Also, this is compensated by the fact, that the Shard itself can gain many other functions too - most popular is Acceleration, but eg. Gravity Pull also works. Sometimes winning a Black Hole is a great advantage - frankly, I have a deck which uses one single Shard of Focus and that Black Hole's healing saved me many times...
So, Shard of Focus can be attached to any deck and in many cases it eliminates the only weakness of that deck. The only "penality" in this case is a dead card (if the deck has no  quanta).

For Permanent protection there is only one element; more precisely, one card.

As a Permanent Control creature, we already had Butterfly Effect, and lucky mutations.

We'd need another Shard instead of this. Or, alternatively, "redirect" Shard of Integrity to the  element, and give  eg. a "Shard of Protection". (Which could protect permanents or increase HP for all creatures, with an  bonus.)

[Absol]

The more I think about it the more I'm sure that Shard of Focus is not a good concept at all.

All other Permanent Controls are bound to certain elements (       and  - did I miss something?). With this Shard, any deck can have a Permanent Control. Though it can be used limited times, same goes for Explosion, Earthquake and Steal, and these can be used only once. And SoF can be used multiple times via CC. Though the Shard can be easily destroyed right after it's been played, after one use it's hard to get rid of it. Also, this is compensated by the fact, that the Shard itself can gain many other functions too - most popular is Acceleration, but eg. Gravity Pull also works. Sometimes winning a Black Hole is a great advantage - frankly, I have a deck which uses one single Shard of Focus and that Black Hole's healing saved me many times...
So, Shard of Focus can be attached to any deck and in many cases it eliminates the only weakness of that deck. The only "penality" in this case is a dead card (if the deck has no  quanta). Not even a dead card, only "additional card which you can't use".

For Permanent protection there is only one element; more precisely, one card. PA is for surefire permanent protection, Cloak for bait/temporary protection.

As a Permanent Control creature, we already had Butterfly Effect, and lucky mutations. BE is going obsolete with SoFo anyway, as both have high cost while SoFo is more versatile.

We'd need another Shard instead of this. Or, alternatively, "redirect" Shard of Integrity to the  element, and give  eg. a "Shard of Protection". (Which could protect permanents or increase HP for all creatures, with an  bonus.) Or just reduce HP gain to +2 or +3 per use. Still useful as Accel fodder, but is far easier to counter. As of now, either next turn counter or gg. Reduced versatility? Well, a card this versatile is why it's OP.

Agree, and added a few points for consideration.

Spoiler for Maybe this should be enough?:

[Aneninen]

Agree, and added a few points for consideration.

Spoiler for Maybe this should be enough?:

Seems fine. The great difference is that it'd be still vulnerable to Lightning/Shockwave/E.Otyugh and Siphon/Fire/IceBolt after one use too.

(off) By the way, anyone noticed, how annoying when Shard of Focus becomes a subject of... Fractal? ^_^ (/off)

[esran]

absol. yes. it keeps some syncrho, and allows you to better combo it with cc, in return for making it far more volnurable to cc. its increased cost makes it fair. i would be happy with this change to the card.

[sunyata]

it still bugs me there isnt a poll

It has been bugging me for some time too.  After waiting months for a poll, I finally decided to add one myself at http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,41127.0.html based on all the great suggestions in this thread.  Apologies if this ends up causing a fork in the discussion, but its high time there was a poll available.  The post with the poll links back to this thread, so hopefully the discussion will remain somewhat contained.

[Higurashi]

Poll added. I naturally voted to make it in-element, as that's what I think all Shards should've been to begin with. Unique cards with unique flavour is the only thing that can truly increase the variety in the game.

[ZephyrPhantom]

the fact that the capacity is free to play is part of the OPness of this card yeah

what if the cost of the ability was increasing at the same time as the HP?

first activation: 1
second activation: 2 
third activation: 3
etc ...

Another great idea.
Maybe start with 2 . (obviously after testing starting with 1 )

I like this idea the most, as it retains the Other-ness of the card while forcing the player to rethink how much quanta they want to waste (given the appropriate start/increase, though - I currently prefer the 2 + 1 model suggsested.) Some more anti-PC and PC to level out the elements (such as allowing Freeze to target permanents) would also be a nice way to even things up seeing as elements may find better in-element alternatives to PC than a non-element card like SoF.

[bobknows]

For me there are two reasons why sof is op:

For every one in your deck you have 3 perm control, to match this outside pillars you need either flying pulvys or multiple BE, which both cost more total and more cards.

It can be played first turn consistently through nova, even in the unupped world. This makes the only way to counter it is through novas of your own, and lightning costs 2 making first turn cc impossible to do consistently in the unupped world.

This leads me to 2 nerfs which should balance it together:

Playing one first turn causes some negative effect, be it singularity, a straight 20 damage , whatever.

-and-

Either having two on the field causes singularity
Or nerf the number of times it can accrete to 2, possibly reducing cost by one