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To help clear confusion, it is also impotant to clarify that attacking and defending are different things. In the definition of disabled, it doesnt explicitly say that the card cannot attack, defend, or activate abilities. When your hero is the one who initiates the attack, he is attacking and the ally is defending. Because he becomes disabled by the initial attack, he is no longer able to defend, and thus he can no longer deal damage back to your hero.Quote:
Originally Posted by Caitlyn0
guys, you dont have to explain the rules to me. i am saying they dont make sense. i am saying the defender ability is now worse than we thought before this "clarification"
Well average user wont come to forums to read 20something steps ruling that elaborates how combat works and will be like WTF is happening, it makes no sense, feels bad man, which leaves bad impression which leads to bad business. So I am also more in favor of rulings to reflect intuitive expectations of players. In this case I am pretty sure none would expect this behavior to occur even with knowledge of the rules. Not to mention it would open up a lot of new and exciting possibilities for card interactions. And that adds to the depth of the game, not some obscure clause in rulings.
This question never happened before, so it wouldn't be anormal to modify the rulebook to take it into account. Other games modify their rule book all the time for new interraction. It makes no sense that a disabled ally can deal it's damage (physically it's the same as if i attack him with ankle breaker, and it probably should work the same way in the game)
It seems like some people think defender makes the attacker into the defender and the defender into the attacker. It doesn't and we can't change the rules to do that. Whatever happens, the attacker should be the one who attacked and the defender is the one who defends.
The Defender keyword simply means that if you are able to defend (by still being in play and can defend - by not being frozen/disabled or facing ambush) that you get to defend and dish out your combat damage before the attacker gets to dish out theirs. If the attack has already begun then disabling/freezing the attacker is irrelevant because the attack already happened to cause the combat within which you disabled/froze them.
BobRoss already brilliantly covered this in his own words above and I did another two times at least, as well as within the step-by-step rules - which are set to appear in the updated rulebook and within the app itself.
The main thing I learn here is that "community input version" of card rulings leads to a complete mess and that's why we require the Card Rulings section that only official people can answer. If you disagree with a ruling, then it's best to seek clarification in private rather than drag more and more people into it. If it then turns out that the ruling needs improvement, then it can be done. This discussion has led to an additional step in the combat phase being added for clarity - to explicitly cover what happens if the attacker is removed from combat before they are able to dish out their combat damage - but I'm sure we could have come to that quicker in private.
I really don't think there is any more to say here and this has gone on far too long so this is closed now. There's a clear ruling in response to the original question in the Card Rulings section:
http://www.shadowera.com/showthread....g-and-defender