A cool feature for BC could be it stays hidden until triggered and it moves like a blizzard to the closest valid friendly target and that champion becomes stealthed and is removed after three total attacks. I do not know how complicated that would be to do.
Nobody attacks a RD'd champion more than once, so the effective damage from the spell itself isn't exactly amazing (especially when you expect it), plus the RD baiting is usually obvious. Proper deck building addresses most of your other concerns. Again since your reading comprehension seems to be lacking, they're not comparable. They don't function the same way and don't have the same purpose. Comparing immunity to a couple of attacks missing will clearly make missing attacks worse in isolation, but that's not how this game works nor how the spells pan out on the board.
Nobody attacks a RD'd champion more than once, so the effective damage from the spell itself isn't exactly amazing - This proves my point. No one is attacking the Champ (Which equals dmg not taken) and the spell is lasting a full 6 rounds of protection. and 6 minus the 40 nora cost of cool down is better than BC being a 1/2 round of protection to wait for 40 nora of cool down. Protection from ranged champs has far better value. Since RD is not very good lets nerf BC and have it operate like this below... How about BC gives 7 missed attacks for 6 turns against ranged champs only for 40 nora. Melee champs can hit away. The trade off would there is no reflection damage and precision will go right through where RD will still provide protection. If RD is not that great than the spell I just mentioned for BC should be no problem and on equal ground with RD.
They don't have to be equal in cost and power. I'm not arguing whether one is better than the other either, but by all means continue to read what you want to read as well as making pointless comparisons between two spells which are not meant to do the same from both a design and playability standpoint.
The biggest point is BC probably needs to be lowered in cost or do more of something. Protection from ranged units with no real counters (other than dispell which works on both) for 6 turns has way more value. Even playing UD it helps against 1 -2 range champs and using the font post as interference is way helpful. You are right the two spells do not do the same thing, how ever the value to get to 40 nora and the amount of damage it prevents can be compared. Your opponent deploys a ranged champ early on you have a ranged champ with RD, you know you have 6 rounds of immune and can engage with no concern. You can even say your opponent knows it. Who cares. That's 6 attacks x 10 average dmg of prevent. IF they have 2 ranged champs it is 60 to 120 dmg of prevention due to they are not attacking you. Same scenario with BC, you have to wait around for your support to arrive and while waiting you are getting pelted by ranged attacks one round later. The other thing that RD does is causes your opponent to either wait it out or engage with melee or spell spam you. With BC your opponent does not change strategy and fires away. You may get lucky and avoid a power attack, but that is very specific for 40 nora. You may avoid 30 dmg on average with BC and it is over. IF they have precision then you prevent no damage and it is over. Then the awesome happens where you have to wait 5 extra rounds of cool down to use it again because in round one blizzard cloak is gone. IF BC just prevented 7 ranged attacks for 6 turns that would be awesome. It still makes sense as it is hard to fire ranged in a blizzard, but it still has its weakness verse precision and does not reflect anything. Even if BC somehow could have a lower cool down, this spell would be better as you can close the gap between protection and cool down times.
No they can't. One provides immunity to ranged damage and one doesn't. That's it. No way around it. It's a stretched comparison just to prove a point. RD is not a spell you're meant to measure against blizzard cloak simply because the premise and effects on both as well as their use do not match. You don't use BC the same way you use RD, because in most instances (of using them equally) it wouldn't be a worthwhile investment based on sheer champion cost. That however does not mean a mechanic that ST would otherwise not have access to is inappropriately costed or not useful on it's own accord. Your argument on how Blizzard Cloak should be both utility and cost wise seems to be solely based on what the other faction gets for the same investment, but it has a complete disregard for context and the purpose that they had originally intended for them. Your last suggestion (don't know if srs) is amusing. It's funny how everyone talks about faction flavor around here and they're willing to disregard it just to get something going. BC belongs in ST and RD in IS. If you want to suggest changes for either do it within the context of their own faction and I assure you it will provide better results. In ST a hidden spell that has 2 to 3 attacks miss is 40 Nora? Cool then. Beats not having one. Inclusion or not is up to you, the rune pool is big enough and not everything needs to be 'staple' status to be run~able. Edit: Worth noting the spell could be left the way it is and I wouldn't care.
While I understand that your opinion on RD not being related is very firm compared to...everyone else, I think you're over-valuing existence. There are PLENTY of shoe-box runes that do unique concepts. Existence does not equate to any cost being worth paying. I don't run BC because it costs too much for doing far too little. The reason so many of us compare it to RD, is the SAME reason you compare it to HH. Its a spell you toss down to try and lure the opponent off balance and maybe keep your champ alive. Stating, "Its in another faction and therefor the comparison is invalid" is well, invalid because of a very very simple premise. ALL factions use the same resource. Nora. Its generated in the same way. Champions are run across the field, and supported by spells and equipment. This is true in every single faction. Thus, when you have things that perform similar roles, they can and SHOULD be judged in similar manners. In the same turn, its completely valid to say, RD shouldn't be considered because of X factor only local to IF that directly influences the comparison. But, as far as I'm aware, there isn't actually any factor. In fact, IF has a lot of the same things we do. Bulky, a little high on cost champs with spells designed to make it worth summoning them. So while I understand your view that RD has no relevance in this discussion, I think a lot of us disagree with that shallow view. The two spells perform nearly (not exactly) identical roles. One is clearly a better value and almost always auto-included in decks, the other is hit and miss, and being phased out more and more.
Barely. The spell does have a function even right now at a potential 30 Nora through discounts. It's usable and not over the top, but that says more about how PoxNora has evolved than individual performance. Yes. As well as some of them would perform amazingly under certain circumstances. There aren't enough shifts to often justify their existence and they will most likely fall behind upon new releases or perform better within certain decks, an example being Crystal Reflection vs Ice Stars. Yes, currently it's hard to justify expenses outside of champs (I've always played that way, unlike many ST players who are spell trigger happy) unless they get kills, which again would be what happens under the correct circumstances if BC gets it's hidden clause back. These types of defensive spells will obviously see less play if champions get cheaper, that's not to say however that there aren't current champions which can benefit from it, if you run them, it's still worth the include. Yes. But on the board and what you may get back from either is not the same. BC is a spell for the early game or single font battles (generally when there aren't many champs on the board, though there might be exceptions), which is why you wouldn't use it as you would RD, so you can't really expect the same outcome. So aside from the hidden surprise element, you won't see them pan out on the board equally. As situational as both might be comparing them is unrealistic, which is is why I deem HH more fitting for a comparison between these runes. Again, there is no doubt that immunity against ranged provides a raw advantage, but so does BC when played under optimal circumstances. Old and proposed BC would still do great in today's pox. That's not the sole reason. Just that comparing ranged immunity against attacks being evaded when the spells have been the same way for the most part for quite long is kind of silly. The way to acquire Nora is indeed similar to an extent, putting aside exceptions such as abilities and faction bonuses, but the way the Nora is spent isn't, nor what you get back from it when you do so. Cost does often translate to viability, but other factors partake as well, context based ones. You can do comparisons between runes with similar functions in relation to their cost alright, but that's only if they are similar to begin with. Guess which two runes aren't. The only thing RD does by being in IS is further amplify the strengths of the rune, the same way BC works for ST. Themes hardly rely on high cost champions besides a few exceptions nowadays, so you really ought to wonder if the way BC is priced is really out of hand the way it is right now, or the potential 40~45 Nora version with the hidden clause. Back in the day it would have been slightly high, yet still worth it, nowadays I think it's a fair deal. Shallow? Quite the opposite, really. They don't have identical roles. They share the purpose of mitigating damage, but they have always been vastly different from one another on how they mitigate said damage. To me, a rune that prevents all damage from range can't even be remotely similar to one that prevents a couple of attacks. The way you approach them is different, the advantages they give are different, and their weaknesses are different but more importantly, the reason YOU PLAY them for is different. Cost wise they might be the same, but stating one is better than the other is just oversimplifying things, as well as holding up to unrealistic expectations. I also dislike auto-includes and it's something that in my opinion we shouldn't strive for, so it not being auto yet a plausible deck building solution is fine by me. Overall I guess we have different approaches and reasons to use the spells hence the different perspectives, but my main argument is and still remains that since I started playing, these runes have had the same function (except now with non hidden BC) they do now, and both have worked properly on their respective factions on their own accord, so I do not think they should be made similar or have BC be greatly buffed (besides hidden maybe) because the spell was and continues to be useful. Perhaps the current version is less versatile, but if we took the raw mechanics of any spell and compared them to RD or any other type of spell that excels, many of them would pale in said comparison. Either way, I'll leave it at that and not overstate my opinion as I genuinely doubt I'll change anyone's around here since we look at things differently. Have a good one.
The arguments about hypothetical damage prevented by RD is patently ridiculous, that is not how the game works, nor is positing best case scenarios as though they are common place valid either. If you are going to compare runes, the way to do it is to identity the relative strengths and weaknesses of the different runes and attempt to place a value on those things or balance them out. For example, you might say, "This spell does less damage, but that is evened out by the other spell having a secondary effect." At the same time, it is fair to acknowledge that different runes excel at different times, and in the case of RD and BC, there are certainly situations in which one is better than the other, and it is not always RD that is better. This is true for many reasons, but the biggest one is clearly the fact that RD is anti-ranged only. Lastly, not all runes have equivalents to other factions - that is not the game of PoxNora. While I encourage the use of logical analysis, we should also recognize that different factions are going to have runes that are stronger in a particular area than similar runes in another faction. Full parity is not the goal here. I think, when push to comes to shove, most people would tend to include anti-range vs anti-ranged+melee, assuming the 2 are costed fairly. Most players would assume that the anti-range will be cheaper/more efficient because it is preventing damage from a smaller subset of units, but a subset that they are generally more afraid of and place more value on. At the same time, it is correct to value damage reflection higher than causing attacks to miss. It is also valid to consider the ranged vs ranged+melee part of the effect, as well as the durations of the effects. And, of course, the hidden clause that is the part we are discussing. All of these are factors to consider and value. Also, and you guys wouldn't know this specifically (tho you can infer it from the rune's design), but the original design for BC was to give Terrain Decks an efficient spell to protect their champs with, since they pay for terrain with abilities. The spell was intended to be less efficient outside of terrain decks, but still playable. But it was never intended to be auto in meta-ST. Anyway, so how would I go about analyzing the RD vs BC thing? We can start in either direction, but the key is to take it step by step and value each difference accordingly. RD is 40 nora Extend RD to cover all attacks instead of just ranged... probably around 25 nora to 65 (this is effectively 65 nora to be immune to targeted damage for 6 turns, Impervious is ALL damage for 2 turns for 30 nora, so seems reasonable from a pure cost/efficiency perspective, though it's harder to evaluate whether a 65 nora spell would be ran) Hidden is probably worth about 10 nora, so if we removed that, this spell would be worth 55 nora For reference, we are now talking about a non-hidden version of RD that covers melee attacks also Next, we change it from reflection to cause misses - this is not insignificant, so probably in around 15 nora, bringing us to a 40 nora effect Next, we change it to 3 attacks instead of all attacks during the duration, I think we can knock another 10 nora off here to arrive at 30 Description: For 6 turns, the next 3 attacks misses. (Nora: 30) Next we extend the duration to 8 and add the nora clause on Snow/Ice (+5 nora, mostly on the nora clause side) So now, we arrive at an 8 turn duration BC without hidden at 35 nora, and 25 nora on Snow/Ice. So, assuming you agree with the above, we would say that BC is currently overcosted by 5 nora. We could then simply suggest adding hidden to the base effect, and increasing the cost by 5 to 45 (using the previous valuation of 10 nora for a hidden effect). It would also mean ALTERNATIVE A and B in the OP is better priced at 40 nora, instead of 45. Some of those valuations you might disagree with, for example, you might say going to all attacks is only worth 20, or that reflection to misses should be 20, etc. or that going from all to 3 attacks should be 15 nora. These would require more specific analysis and discussion to hash out, but since we deal with blocks of 5 nora, we can't be too nitpicky about it (if we overvalue one strength a little and undervalue another strength somewhat, it probably washes). But anyway, this is much more clear way to come to an objective analysis of the differences between the runes and also attempt to place a value on those differences, instead of just highlighting when the spell you think is stronger is strong.
The arguments about hypothetical damage prevented by RD is patently ridiculous, that is not how the game works, nor is positing best case scenarios as though they are common place valid either. It is not ridiculous. If a range champ has 10 dmg and is not attacking that champ for 6 turns it is minimally x 5 attacks 50 points of dmg prevented. Most champs with range deal 10 dmg. Also protection from range is a far better value than protection from melee. I would rather Blizzard cloak just provide protection from ranged attacks for 6 turns while occupying snow or ice with no Reflection damage. It makes sense. HArd to shoot in a blizzard
If you like RD so much, just play IS and run it Seriously tho, BC isn't going to be ST's version of RD. It may get hidden back, but that's about it, I am not completely redesigning this rune over 5 nora or so.
I would not want to be like IS I think it would be cool if it activated it then went to the nearest friendly champ. May be instead of hidden it provides hidden arctic. Keeping it to its terrain theme. I would like more randomness but, a lot of players do not.
Dont worry about that man, getting the hidden clause back will already sufice. If it does get changed, that is.
I don't even understand what you are saying now. Even if I did, again, I am not redesigning this thing.
