[confirm]Assign combat damage as it weren't blocked issues

[Aswan jaguar]

Describe the Bug:
I couldn't find any info on our forums so I don't know if this is a deliberate trick or a bug:
If a player has a card with ability like Rhox "assign its combat damage as though it weren't blocked" and the crature isn't blocked everything seems fine.However if Rhox is blocked but you choose to use it's ability the damage isn't assigned to blocker but it shows as assigned to Rhox's owner not opponent.The damage is correctly made to opponent but it is quite confusing when you want to prevent the damage and you have to select the damage card on opponent.

Which card did behave improperly?
"assign its combat damage as though it weren't blocked" ability

Which update are you using? (date, name)Which type? (duel, gauntlet, sealed deck)
Manalink 2016/08/27: Eldritch Moon v2, duel

What exactly should be the correct behavior/interaction?
A creature with this ability if blocked the damage is still shown on opponent not owner.

Are any other cards possibly affected by this bug?
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[Korath]

The way Rhox is currently implemented, it redirects damage from the blocking creature to the opponent of Rhox's controller. Since Rhox's controller still controls the damage, the same bug as I mentioned in my tangent to the recent Reverse Damage bug makes it display as attached to that player, not the player it's actually attached to. So the bug reported here is visual only. (I suspect most other effects that can redirect damage to a player will do the same. The original MicroProse implementations of Jade Monolith and Personal Incarnation worked around this by preventing the original damage and making its source deal damage again directly to the player.)

More serious problems:

The fake redirection effect Rhox uses can be interfered with by other prevention or redirection effects that work while the damage is still attached to the blocking creature. Activated effects during the 4th-edition damage prevention step like Oasis aren't a problem, just continuous ones like Bubble Matrix, and maybe ones that are implemented as creating damage prevention shields like they're all supposed to now. Maybe protection from green (or whatever else) too. And it'll break entirely if you manage to get the Rhox to leave the bf or change controllers between it dealing damage and the redirection effect kicking in, though I can't think of a way offhand that you could do so.

The choice of whether to assign damage as if it were unblocked is made too early, during the declare blockers step; it shouldn't be until it actually begins dealing damage, either in the first strike or normal combat damage steps.

I haven't tested it, but it looks very much like the damage won't ever be dealt if the blocking creature leaves the bf between blocking assignment and combat damage.

Also looks like you never get the choice to use the ability if the Rhox only becomes blocked after normal blocking assignment as with e.g. Mirror Match. If this happens, whichever choice you made the last time it was normally blocked carries over. (Unless this was formerly another creature that's now copying Rhox, or a Rhox that spent time copying some other creature since the last time it was normally blocked, in which case anything can happen since there's no effort made to validate that the recorded data was made while it was a Rhox. But that's endemic in Manalink, and it doesn't seem to cause problems in the wild. How often does one Mirrorweave a Rainbow Knights into a Shapeshifter or vice-versa, anyway?)

Elephant in the room is that the AI assigns attackers and blockers as if this were a vanilla regenerating 5/5, and that it's always forced to choose the "Ignore blocker" option.

[Aswan jaguar]

The fake redirection effect Rhox uses can be interfered with by other prevention or redirection effects that work while the damage is still attached to the blocking creature. Activated effects during the 4th-edition damage prevention step like Oasis aren't a problem, just continuous ones like Bubble Matrix, and maybe ones that are implemented as creating damage prevention shields like they're all supposed to now. Maybe protection from green (or whatever else) too.

Rhox works fine with cards like Buble Matrix, or prevention shield like Angel of Salvation or protection from green like Cerulean Wyvern.

And it'll break entirely if you manage to get the Rhox to leave the bf or change controllers between it dealing damage and the redirection effect kicking in, though I can't think of a way offhand that you could do so.

I couldn't think of a way to test it.I didn't spend more than 2-3 minutes on it though.

I haven't tested it, but it looks very much like the damage won't ever be dealt if the blocking creature leaves the bf between blocking assignment and combat damage.

You are right the damage is not dealt if the blocking creature leaves the bf.

[Korath]

Rhox works fine with cards like Buble Matrix, or prevention shield like Angel of Salvation or protection from green like Cerulean Wyvern.

For Bubble Matrix and Angel of Salvation, at least, it's timestamp-dependent, since both they and Rhox do their thing during EVENT_PREVENT_DAMAGE. Put the Matrix on the bf or create the Angel's damage shield (on the blocking creature) before the Rhox enters the bf, and the latter's combat damage gets prevented whether it's assigned to a creature or player. Create the Angel's damage shield on the defending player before the Rhox enters the bf, and it'll never prevent damage. (If part of the Angel's damage shield is on the blocking creature and some of it on the defending player, then the shields on the creature prevent damage and the ones on the defending player do not, regardless of whether Rhox's ability is used.) Put the Rhox on the bf first, and it works properly in all cases.

Protection from colors or artifacts will happen inconsistently. Protection prevents damage whenever the damage effect card's function is called during damage prevention steps, not in response to a specific event. Since the first event dispatched during a damage prevention step is EVENT_PREVENT_DAMAGE, and a damage card will always have a later timestamp than the permanent that deals it, we'd need some third effect with an earlier timestamp than the damage card that responds to EVENT_PREVENT_DAMAGE by dispatching another event. That's not common. Maybe a Test of Faith with an Enduring Scalelord on the bf (so XTRIGGER_1_1_COUNTERS gets dispatched), cast before the Rhox enters the bf on the creature that'll eventually block it.