Why Has Damage Redirection Been Largely Retired?
General forum
Posted on Feb. 2, 2021, 12:49 p.m. by DemonDragonJ
In this post, Mark Rosewater stated that damage redirection is not being used very frequently, any more, which I find to be unfortunate, since it was a great mechanic that I felt made for an excellent combat trick, and I do feel that this is yet another aspect of white that has been made less prominent, recently. I know that WotC has stated that they are seeking to address white's perceived problems, but, when one of their employees says this, it is difficult to take them seriously, on that matter.
What does everyone else say about this? How do you feel about damage redirection being used less frequently?
There are two problems with damage redirection.
First, it is a tad confusing for new players--you have to remember that redirection keeps the source and damage type. I have often seen new players get confused about this--for example, you can be dealt "combat damage" (and thus implicate any number of triggers) by your own attacking creature if that combat damage is redirected to you. The existence of the intervening redirection card can often trip up players on this front.
Second, there is a very similar effect, from cards like Divine Deflection . However, this changes the source and type of the damage, resulting in a similar effect with a whole host of different implications.
I would guess Wizards wants to focus on either one mechanism or the other, and would be inclined to favor the Divine Deflection path, since it works a bit closer to how new players would expect.
February 2, 2021 2:19 p.m.
DemonDragonJ says... #4
StopShot, Caerwyn, both Harm's Way and Divine Deflection are great cards, but they prevent only a limited amount of damage, and cannot be reused without additional cards, whereas I would like to see a greater number of effects that prevent all damage from a specific source, and are reusable, such as Martyr's Cause or Aegis of Honor , both of which I feel definitely need reprints.
February 2, 2021 5:02 p.m.
There is actually another point I forgot to raise--absolute damage redirection--things that can redirect (either true redirecting or the other method of pseudo-redirecting I mentioned above) 100% of the damage without any real investment are bad gameplay design.
Why? They can easily turn the tide of a game, simply based on luck. It feels bad when one player is about to win--perhaps with an extremely large creature they played, or creature they buffed, or the result of their combo, or something like Aetherflux Reservoir , where they other wise invested in it, or pumped a bunch of mana into a burn spell, or.... etc.
By rights, that player should win the game--or at the very least not lose the game due to their own investment. Removing a large creature or countering a large spell feels fair--it prevents them from winning the game, but they still have a chance to do more things.
Absolute damage redirection turns that on its head. Essentially, these cards say "Hey, remember all that effort you just invested into winning the game? Well, your opponent happened to draw one card, so.... you lose the game."
Having it set up so players can defeat themselves due to their own superiority and an opponent's lucky draw is not great for the health of the game.
February 2, 2021 5:26 p.m. Edited.
jamochawoke says... #6
I can say that Batwing Brume which is a card I absolutely adore tends to get the same reaction from my opponents, especially if they have clear advantage.
I once had a Modern game where the decks were pretty evenly matched, until my opponent got some serious token generation going and started to overwhelm me and I didn't have any sweepers left. I had batwing ready to go but he didn't know that. He prolonged the game for an absurd amount of time before swinging in for the kill with about 15 tokens. He only had about 10 life at the time. He then stated that he needed to go home and rethink his life once I simply put batwing on the stack and said "you lose".
There's also Deflecting Palm which redirects damage, albeit by doing the prevention and then damage coming from the actual card, and tends to get a similar reaction as well even if both cards redirect the tempo of the game in different ways.
StopShot says... #2
Personally, I love the card Harm's Way , but I can see why it is being phased out. The mechanic is similar to preventing damage in which both effects only work so long as there’s a damage source your opponent controls. This means the mechanic is 100% dependent on what your opponent is doing. Of course the odds of your opponent using damaging effects is a more likelier trigger than other white keywords, such as protection as protection to black or any other stated color which is also another effect that is highly dependent on what your opponent does. And even so the damage redirection can be hard to implement as well. Most damage effects happen on the enemy’s turn or through a spell on the stack during your turn which means this mechanic always needs to be utilized at instant speed. This also creates a problem when this sort of effect is attached to a creature as it eliminates the surpise factor and gives your opponent the insight to make plays around it. Damage redirection I would say is also weaker than protection in some ways, because it’s already hard to remove a Mother of Runes , a Stave Off on a stick, than it would to remove a Harm's Way on a stick which says a lot about the effect’s practically since both effects have been getting diminished more and more over time. I personally enjoy running reactive cards, but Magic meta of today seems to be much more focused on making proactive decks and it seems like Wizards would rather phase out reactive effects like regeneration, protection, damage redirection, damage prevention for more and more white wheenie shenanigans regarding white. Personally, I would love to see a white evergreen keyword be implemented into the game that’s a water-down version of Spitemare ’s ability.
February 2, 2021 2:04 p.m.