So, my opponent targeted a divine shielded minion with conjured arrow (manathirst active). They did draw two cards. Damage dealt was 0 and divine shield was lost. Why did the card draw happen?
It’s because of the way divine shield works. All damage done against divine shield still “happens,” it just shows a zero because it makes the most sense visually.
For example: when a minion with divine shield is summoned and it triggers the mage secret that does 6 damage, it will ‘do’ damage equal to the minion’s health [like normal] and the excess [if any] will go to the face, even though it “shows” a damage of 0.
It’s not intuitive, but it’s the underlying mathematical logic of divine shield in hearthstone.
Another way to explain is is to read the card carefully. It does not say “draw as many cards as the damage taken by the minion”. It says “draw that many cards”, which refers to damage dealt, not taken.
Words matter on Hearthstone cards. Conjured Arrow deals damage. Divine Shield causes the minion to ignore it, so that the minion takes zero damage. Divine Shield does not prevent the dealing of damage (as e.g. Counterspell would), it causes the dealt damage to be ignored.
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Another simpler way to put it is that Divine Shield simply negates (or ignores) damage, it doesn’t change the amount of damage being dealt.
A Fireball still does 6 damage, the Divine Shield just ignores it.
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With this logic, shouldn’t lifesteal heal even if it targets a divine shielded minion? Lifesteal is “damage dealt also heals your hero”. But the healing is zero.
I understand the difference between damage dealt and taken. But the game seems to treat damage dealt differently in these examples (conjured arrow vs lifesteal)
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Yes, you are correct. The wording used on the tooltip for Lifesteal is incorrect and misleading. It should have been “Heals your hero for the amount of damage received by the target(s)”.
That changed wording would make it consistent with both Divine Shield as well as e.g. Mo’arg Artificer.
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Your problem is ultimately with how hs’s ‘logic’ works to begin with. The devs have decided that creating universal language that is 100% unambiguous would make the game too complicated to understand and awkwardly worded.
Instead, they opt to keep wording as concise as possible [at the risk of misunderstandings and inconsistencies] because their goal is for you to read/use the card once and after that you understand how it works forever. I’ve been playing the game for a while, and I’ve gained an innate understanding of its particular logic, to the point where even if something isn’t fully explained to me from a gameplay mechanics perspective, seeing how cards interact still makes inherent sense to me and I’m not surprised by interactions other players interpret as bugged or misleading in description.
I see…
I came to HS from MTG, where wording is extremely precise anywhere.
This is not my first unexpected interaction from misleading wording. “Play” and “cast”, “freeze” and “rush”, cost reduction, dealing X damage vs X times 1 damage, and now “dealt” and “taken”.
The sloppy wording on the Lifesteal tooltip is actually a rare exception. I think there are one or two cards where “Cast” is used incorrectly, but other than that I am pretty sure that the HS team is actually quite consistent with how the terms with game-specific meaning are used.
“Play” always refers to moving a card from your hand to the deck area, which makes you pay the mana cost and activate its effect.
“Summon” is any effect that adds a minion to your board; it can be the playing of a minion card, a spell that summons, a deathrattle that summons, or even your opponent playing a card that summons a minion on your side.
“Cast” refers to activating a spell effect. A lot of confusion by new players is caused by not reading the rest of the card carefully. Some card effects depend on spells that you have cast. When a spell is cast by a minion, or by a spell that casts other spells, then it was not you that cast the spell.
“Freeze” makes a character miss their next attack. The effect lasts until you end a turn where the character could have made an attack but didn’t.
“Rush” means the minion can attack the turn it is played, but it can only target enemy minions for that attack, not the enemy hero. If the opponent has no targetable minions, then Rush effectively does nothing.
“Charge” is like Rush, but without the exception for targeting the hero. So a Charge minion can attack the enemy hero when it’s played (except of course when there’s a Taunt minion in the way).
“cost reduction” - Not sure where you consider that misleading, all cards that offer cost reduction (or cost increase, or cost change) are worded precisely as far as I know. But if multiple cost affecting cards are played, then it IS important to know how they interact,which is not always obvious to a starting player.
“dealing X damage vs X times 1 damage” - The only time I was surprised was when Sire Denathrius was released. I expected it to work similar to the older card C’Thun, or to the newer card Astalor, the Flamebringer. However, C’Thun and Astalor, the Flamebinger both use one wording (“deal X damage randomly split among all enemies”), and Sire Dednathrius uses a different phrasing (“deal X damage amongst enemies”). Neither clearly indicate how it will work, that’s part of the philosophy ‘learn as you play’ - but the two that act the same do use the same term, and the one that’s different has a different term.
If you encounter cards where the wording on the card makes it hard to predict its effect, then the best place to ask about that is the New Players Forum, which is specifically intended to help people gain an understanding of the game.
If you encounter more cards where you believe the effect to be inconsistent with the wording, then of course make a new post here in the Bug Report forum, preferably with screenshots or (even better!) a link to a replay of the game if you play with an addon that tracks your games.
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