As we know, GU team is looking for ways to nerf armor which became a bit of a problematic mechanic. We were in a PTR (limited time tests with players) as part of which creature with armor will lose 1 armor, each time such a creature takes damage.
While I do agree that armor is currently a bit too strong, I strongly dislike the current proposition. The biggest problem with armor is that creatures with a lot of it become invincible. It is very hard to get even 1 damage in. The proposed change does not address it in the slightest. On the contrary - it mostly weakens creatures with low armor - in case of which it mostly works as intended already, and is not OP. From the general reception of the proposed change online, most other players do not like the change either.
Given that - the question is - what should we do with armor? To answer this question we need to take a step back. Lets say we introduce a new mechanic to a game and create a bunch of cards that utilize them. We can't predict upfront, the strength of cards using it- if we make them too weak, they will become useless. The usual approach is to make them a bit stronger in order to avoid that, with an intention to nerf it, if it becomes OP. Moreover, even if certain cards are not excessively strong at the moment of print, they can become such when new cards appear in the future.
This might not be a problem in case of games like Hearthstone, when any card can get changed at any time. In GU, when card is printed and the balancing phase ends, the card is set in stone. As a result, it is very hard to guarantee, that any given card will not become imbalanced as times goes on, unless we had some measure that could balance it out "live". A way that would increase power of such mechanics when cards having it are weak in meta, and decrease their power when they dominate.
Fortunately, there is a way to make that happen. Whenever we create a new mechanic and give it to some cards, we should create cards that counter this mechanic. If we do so, popularity of counter cards in a meta will be directly proportional to popularity of cards running the new mechanic. The more popular counter is, the weaker the mechanic it counters it. This leads to automatic adjustment of power level of existing cards, without the need to change their text.
Lets get back to armor here. My suggestion is not to change in any way the way armor works. Instead lets introduce cards that counter it. I'd suggest introduction of a new keyword armorpiercer. Cards with armorpiercer would ignore armor when dealing damage, thus effectively handling it. It particular, it would handle cards with a lot of armor - as those tend to have very low health. I provide a few examples of such cards below:
