Hunter's Gambit and Shard of Power

[Peithoson]

Shouldn't Gambit kill an ally that is being affected by Shard of Power?

Thanks

[Mojumbo]

Heya,

Gondorian wrote up this answer to a similar question before:

Hi there.

Shard of Power says "Your allies have +2 attack and a maximum of 1 health while Shard of Power is in play."

This means that whatever their health should be (via any other modifiers), it is treated as 1. If Shard of Power leaves play, the health pops back up to what it should have been if Shard was not capping it at 1.

When Raven's Gambit is played on an ally, the health of that ally is indeed temporarily modified by -1. So 2 becomes 1, 5 becomes 4 as you would expect. But when Shard of Power is out, it puts a cap on that health and sets it to 1.

What's the point of Shard of Power then? It means that an ally taking 1 damage while it is out will kill the ally. But any other non-damage health changes are calculated in the background and Shard applies the cap of 1 afterwards.

The key is basically that Shard of Power applies its temporary cap to your maximum health only after all other temporary stat modifiers have been calculated. Raven's Gambit is a temporary health modifier in the same way that Life Infusion is. Whether it be "has +5 health" or "has -1 health" it will be treated as a temporary health modifier and will be used to calculate your allies current health before Shard of Power enforces its maximum health cap.

The difference between a Rampant Krygon and Raven's Gambit is that one is a permanent reduction of health (Krygon) whereas the other is a temporary health modifier (Gambit). For example, if you kill Rampant Krygon after it has used its ability on an opposing ally, that ally wont get its lost health back. However, if you were to remove a Raven's Gambit from one of your allies you would get the 1 health back.

Hope that helps