I think there's ambiguity in the wording of Shield damage mitigation, and that has a significant impact on Imbue and how the composite shields work - hence, the "working knowledge" part of composite shields.
Similarly to Imbued weapons (as mentioned in a prior post), there's the "base shield", and "imbued shields" that grant the base shield additional passive abilities or sometimes an additional active ability. The best way I can describe it is "think of your base shield as the icon in the game you see" - e.g. if you recognise the icon for the shield as "Solar Shield", then your base shield is Solar Shield. Every other shield is an "imbued shield", and the "composite shield" is what I refer to as the base shield + imbued shields (the unit as a whole). The "flat" damage reduction of your composite shield is derived from the base shield, much like the power of your imbued weapon. Note that this flat damage reduction can be increased via passive abilities that increase damage reduction, such as Slime Shield or Stonewall, but is NOT altered by the base damage reduction from imbued shields.
So for example, if I have 6 Diamond Shields, all imbued onto each other, the "flat" damage reduction of the composite shield will simply be 3, which is equal to the damage reduction of a single Diamond Shield, because the flat damage reduction on a composite shield does not get increased by the flat damage reduction of other shields imbued onto your base. However, if I have a Diamond Shield imbued with an upgraded Stonewall (with 99
quanta, meaning the passive ability gives 11 extra damage reduction), my flat damage reduction will be equal to 14. Do note however, that it's not equal to 15, which is what you'd expect if it also merged the flat damage reduction from the Stonewall.
My understanding of it is that there is the general term "damage mitigation", which I use to mean "this reduces the damage you take via any specific mechanism." However, there's (at least) 4 subcategories of "damage mitigation" which mitigate damage through various mechanisms:
- Damage evasion: The shield makes you "evade" the attack, resulting in no damage taken whatsoever. Examples of damage evasion are Gravity Shield and Chaos Mantle.
- Damage reduction: The shield "reduces" the damage you take from an attack, resulting in less damage taken than the power of the attacker (or more damage in the specific case of Thermal Recoil). Most of the shields in this game fall under this category, examples are Diamond Shield and Tower Shield.
- Damage blocking: The shield uses some mechanism to "block" the damage you'd take from an attack, resulting in no damage taken. This is separate from damage reduction - see cards like Dissipation Field or Shell of Void. (Note that in the case of the latter, the upgraded version of Shell of Void also has a damage reduction ability which reduces damage taken by 1, and then the rest is "blocked" by the separate ability that reduces your maxHP equal to the excess, unreduced damage, so upgraded Shell of Void technically has both Damage Reduction AND Damage Blocking.)
- Damage reflection: The shield reflects the damage from spells - examples are Bubble Shield, Jade Shield.
Appreciation doesn't increase your maxHP based on how much damage is
mitigated by your shield, nor does it increase maxHP by how much damage is
blocked or
evaded by your shield. If it did, what we should be able to do is we should be able to imbue any shield in the game with Appreciation, and however much damage it mitigates, you gain that much maxHP. If you playtest enough, you'll find that that's not what happens. Notable examples are Dissipation Field ("Block all damage...") imbued with Appreciation or Phase Shield ("Completely block enemy attacks...") imbued with Appreciation or Gravity Shield ("Evade all attackers...") imbued with Appreciation. Note that all of these shields formally have 0 damage reduction. For example, if you can bypass the evasion rule on an unaltered Gravity Shield, then you will deal full damage to your opponent. None of these composite shields will increase your maxHP.
In playtesting, I think the more accurate description based on gameplay is that
Appreciation increases your maxHP based on how much damage is reduced by your shield. This damage reduction - in the case of a composite shield imbued with Appreciation - is taken from your base shield, and increased by passive abilities (but NOT base damage reduction) from other shields imbued onto your base. This is why this proposed deck is so difficult to pilot - in order for Appreciation to work, you need to ensure that your base shield is either Solar Shield or Appreciation, as Hush, Dissipation Field, and Gravity Shield all have 0 base damage reduction.
The way around this problem would be if you were to imbue an additional shield with a passive ability that increases your shield's damage reduction. The two shields that come to mind are Stonewall and Slime Shield. This would make it so that you don't need to think about "base changing", instead you just need to imbue everything into one composite shield, and it will increase your maxHP. But just adding in 1 copy of this card negatively impacts consistency in playtesting, so I just go without and instead "base change" (see spoiler for "How to 'Base Change'").
Spoiler for How To "Base Change":
Requirements: 2 Imbue in hand, 2 shields in hand, 1 shield in play.
Suppose I have shield C in play, and in my hand I have shield A, shield B, and 2 Imbue. I don't want shield C as my base for whatever reason (e.g. quanta cost, 0 flat damage reduction (for Appreciation/Solar Shield)). Shield A is my preferred base. What you do is:
- Cast Imbue on Shield B. Shield C (base) imbued with Shield B is returned to hand.
- Play Shield A.
- Cast Imbue on Shield C imbued with shield B. Shield A (base) imbued with Shield C + B returned to hand.
- Play Shield A imbued C + B.
But yes! To summarise because I've probably been yapping for too long - reading the card in the case of Appreciation doesn't explain the card, because Appreciation doesn't increase maxHP equal to the maxHP "blocked". If I may, I'd like to recommend changing the language on the card to make it more clear that it's based on "damage reduced" rather than "damage blocked", and while we're at it, clean up some of the terminology for a few other shields to make it consistent. Specifically: Golem Defender, Solar Shield, Shell of Void.
Also there seems to be a bug with Metamorphosis - when my mark power is 127 and I cast Metamorphosis, it only changes my mark, and does not seem to increase my mark power.