Attack power can go negative :-(

So I was playing a Braum deck against a SI/Noxus aggro spiders and falling behind fast.  They played a Frenzied Skitterer, I figure: OK, sure they got buffed but my Braum went from 0/5 to 0/5 so no big deal.  I want to take some power off the board so on my turn I challenge the weakest spider, a 3/1, and I play Radiant Strike--except Braum only becomes a 0/6, so the spider lives.  :-(  Apparently, even though it said 0 attack, it appreciated that it should have been at -1 from the Skitterer so the attack portion of my buff cancelled out.  Quickly got overrun by fearsomes a few rounds later.

Just thought I would share that bit of experience.  

Probably a bug(or spider in this case)

The game is in beta, big bugs are expected. 

Quote From DoubleSummon

Probably a bug(or spider in this case)

The game is in beta, big bugs are expected. 

No, I imagine it was as expected.  Like: if I had taken the time to mouse-over my Braum, I expect I would have seen a "-1/-0 until end of turn" listed under his buffs, so when I add "+1/+1 until end of turn" the net result was +0/+1.  I made the mistake of thinking the numbers in the bottom corners of Braum's card were the totality of his stats, but in actuality buffs act like auras that are attached to the card and those stats are just the live result of base stats + buffs.

To avoid miscalculation they should show if a stat goes negative directly on board, without the need to mouseover.

Maybe it was just a visual bug.

Hearthstone has this too if you've ever played Curse of Weakness

negative numbers don't show up, but they do exist and I think that's good because it adds another layer of gameplay

Very interesting. I could go either way on this: Either the Skitterer effect applies, reduces Braum's attack from 0 to 0, and then disappears (not affecting future buffs during the round), or the debuff lingers as OldManSanns suggests. But in the latter case, Riot should definitely work on communicating the debuff effect more clearly.

Agreed that it should be visible to the player - the main difficulty (I'd assume) is the way of creating visual clarity. At a glance, it'd be easy to miss the negative number there - and it'd be usually more impactful to mistake a negative number for a positive one than to see a buff/nerf interaction like this one.

I'd say put the negative number in but give negatives a unique colour palette (say, white text on black background? Not sure how that is for visually impaired people) to make it clear there's something going on.

The real question is whether a minion with negative attack heals the enemy it is attacking or not.

It doesn't, but nice try! ;)

This is how it is supposed to work.

There are two things affecting braum, one gives him -1 attack, and the other gives +1 attack. Therefore, he has 0 attack. I don't see what the problem is.

Quote From KANSAS

This is how it is supposed to work.

There are two things affecting braum, one gives him -1 attack, and the other gives +1 attack. Therefore, he has 0 attack. I don't see what the problem is.

The problem was entirely user error.  I assumed since the skitterer hit first and Braum showed a "0" in the bottom left corner that his effect had run its course with no net effect--e.g., how it would have worked if he'd played an Icevale Archer to my Braum and then I buffed it later in my turn.  The difference there is that frostbite is always a -X buff where X is the attack at the instant the effect is applied (i.e., can never go net negative) so you're never "in the hole" whereas skitterer's effect obviously can.