I’ll the two cards I’m talking about are Mo’arg Artificer: all minions take double damage from spells, and piercing shot: deal 6 damage to a minion, excess damage hits the enemy hero.
I was playing a demon hunter who was running the OTK deck that has this Mo’arg Artificer card in it, the interaction between that card and piercing shot is not correct.
Mo’arg doubles all spell damage to minions, and piercing shot does excess damage to the enemy hero, but when it interacts with Mo’arg it only does excess damage for the 6 damage the spell does, not the doubled damage that the spell does.
i.e. if I hit a full health 3/5 with piercing shot the excess damage to the hero will be 1 damage, not the 7 that it should be. Since that card makes piercing shot do 12 damage
It seems to be the same thing with Explosive Runes and Divine Shield.
Basically, the card computes the damage needed to kill the minion and the amount of damage that remains before hitting the minion. The artificer doubles the damage dealt to minions, but it doesn’t double the damage Piercing Shot does, if it makes sense.
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I don’t think so, I believe divine shield makes the damage to the minion “0” so there is no excess damage. Although admittedly I can’t remember what explosive runes does to a 1/1 argent squire; whether it does 0 or 5 damage.
It does double the damage that piercing shot does, you can kill a 12 health minion with it if the artificer is on the board, and I believe excess damage works with spell damage buffs, i.e. if you were to have a malygos on board and you play piercing shot the excess damage effect would work.
Basically you’ve described the bug, I’d imagine the bug has something to do with Mo’arg’s doubling effect being different from how spell damage effects a spell. Regardless it isn’t a correct interaction
No, Anubis is correct. The spell checks to see how much damage it needs to do to kill that minion and if there’s any excess, it goes to the Hero. Then Mo’arg doubles the damage the minion gets.
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Explosive Rune vs Argent Squire: Deals 0 (it’s 1 but blocked by divine shield) to Argent and 5 to face.
And yeah, that is the thing, Piercing Shot works with Spell Power because it influences the numbers before the spell takes effect, while the Artificer takes effect after you dealt the damage to the minion, not before.
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it’s not bugged, it’s just unnecessarly overcomplicated and not explained properly.
If a spell does 6 damage and moarg says “x2 damage on minion”, then the minion should take 12 damage.
Then 12 - health = overkill damage.
They coded it so it works in a different way, but it’s not intuitive at all
A good way to test this would be to use Mo’arg + Soulbound Ashtongue + Unstable Shadow Bolt (cheapest option thus easier to test). According to how they supposedly coded it, you should take 10 damage (4x2 from the Ashtongue + the remaining 2 damage). If you only take 6, it’s bugged.
But yeah, it’s completely non-intuitive.
Seems to be not working as it should tbh.
Yes, it does. Mo’arg doesn’t say the spell does double damage, but that the minion takes double damage. There’s a difference.
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…can you imagine how broken the spell would be if it actually worked that way?
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Rolling Fireball would become a boardclear, no matter what minions are on the board.
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Yeah, but that should normally mean the minion only takes half damage of what’s necessary, since half x2 = full damage. The Spell says it cannot deal excess damage, yet it does (dealing twice as much damage as necessary to kill the minion).
What I mean is: if you use Piercing Shot vs a 4-health minion, it’s fully understandable Piercing Shot doesn’t deal 6x2 damage (4 damage vs the minion and the remaining 8 damage to face). However, it also doesn’t make sense it deals the minion 4x2 damage (leaving 2 damage for face) since Piercing Shot redirects all excess damage. What it should do is deal 2x2 damage to the minion since that kills the minion due to damage vs minions being doubled, leaving 4 damage for face.
But the spell does damage first, then Mo’arg doubles it. The spell does its damage in one go, it doesn’t split it up in batches. Piercing Shot doesn’t do one damage, check if the Minion is still alive and then does another damage, and so on. It deals it’s damage and afterwards, Mo’arg says “hang on, the minion takes twice as much damage”.
And how would you deal with an odd health minion? Because you’ll always do an even amount of damage (any number times two is even). There will always be one damage in excess.
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Wrong, dealing the damage and doubling the damage through Mo’arg is done simultaneously. Mo’arg is a permanent effect (as long as it’s on the field), not a trigger effect.
As for the odd-part, the 1 over-damage would get converted into 1 extra face damage.
Nothing is done simultaneously, everything is done in batches, even if it doesn’t look like it. Either damage is altered before (like with Spell Damage) or afterwards (like with Mo’arg).
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Except Mo’arg’s timing is the same as Spell Damage: it gets calculated before doing the damage. Maybe indeed not simultaneously, but definitely not after either, it’s literally “Spell Damage” without the keyword support, but with a multiplier rather than an addition and not working vs face.
It’s not the same though. Spell damage increase the initial damage of the spell. While Mo just doubles the damage after it hits the minion, kind of like adding an aura effect to all minions.
No, it’s not. With Spell Damage, the new damage is shown on the card. Mo’arg doesn’t change the damage on the card, so that should show it’s not the same timing. Also, again, Mo’arg doesn’t change the damage from the spell, it changes the damage the Minion is taking, so in order for Mo’arg to work, the Minion must take damage first. Yes, the damage isn’t shown, but it’s still doubled. If things would work simultaneous, a Frostbolt would only deal 6 damage with two Mo’args (since both double the original 3 damage) but as it goes, it deals 12 damage (because one Mo’arg doubles it, then the other Mo’arg doubles it).
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They don’t show the new damage on the card because face damage isn’t doubled (they can’t show Piercing Shot dealing 12 damage because it doesn’t deal 12 despite being doubled, even if it worked the way I think it should).
And if you’d have 2 cards on the field with “Spell Damage x2”, the resulting damage would indeed be quadruple damage since x2 + x2 = x4.
That might be stuff for a question in the next AMA…
My money is on SuddenReal, btw.
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