My guess is that we are headed towards an equilibrium where players in the top guilds have a choice between two kinds of invade teams each fight:
(1) the all-color team that is prone to RNG devours or death marks
(2) the 3-of-a-kind team with the fourth slot used for a utility troop of the “wrong” colors for the day.
People have already worked out the math for the two-troop case on Discord, but I may sit down and crank through whether it’s better to have 2 or 3 correctly colored troops survive vs having all troops survive, but with one of the wrong color. Also need to factor in the chance that all troops die, causing you to lose half your potential points for the day.
not hard to counter Death knight curse with yellow or red teams, I don’t see a good way to counter death knight tomorrow using the color of the day team.
Be nice if barrier could prevent a death curse taking effect.
I think Dracos1337 would be the best bet to control Deadknights as a single troop. Other than that a team with Kerberos to replace possible lost troops while focusing on killing the DK as late as possible.
Anyways i feel your pain, purple seems to be my hardest challenge too. Would be easier though if crafting was here to get those base mythics i miss.^^
Okay since my last two days I have been relying heavily on deathmark - for my wins, the only way I would get rid of deathmark is if Death, Famine, Plaque, War, Devour troops and possibly BD are removed. I believe that it’s what’s making it so I can actually play against OPs that will take them on and actually have a snowballs chance of winning the match.
I just won a match against Humility x2 Plague, Death thanks to Herald and Revenant. Being able to double slice down from top and bottom worked nicely. Team had 500 more points on me and we’re both 9k teams. The guild is in the top 50… so it’s clearly a powerhouse and it was my third level. My fourth again has 2 Humility (one top and one bottom) with Kerb and Draak in the middle. SO YES… I plan on keep using Deathmark if I have to go against these guys.
So instead of death mark killing instantly, we now get our turn to counter it. But unless a troop that can remove it is already charged and ready to go, there’s basically no change.
I’m all for it being changed, but that doesn’t seem like it would actually make any difference other than extreme circumstances.
There’s only 4(?) troops and 2(?) hero weapons that can cleanse all allies. Not sure people will make a team around one of those so they can rush to charge them up and then not use them until death mark is placed on your troops.
Maybe I’m just a little salty after my last two battles against death mark.
1st battle everyone gets marked. 1st turn two die, 2nd turn one dies and then 3 loads of skull cascades to kill the other troop.
2nd battle everyone is marked again. 1st turn one dies, 2nd turn 2 dies, 3rd turn I was left alone and then 4th turn the last one dies.
Death casting, not me killing the hero.
Why not drain death you ask? Spirit Fox and Psion don’t charge as quickly an an AI controlled Death I’m afraid.
It’s worth remembering that in the 1 turn grace period you have a 10% chance to self cleanse, and 20% on the second turn before it get’s a chance to proc. While my brain is a bit math fuzzy after this week, I think that’s twice the chance for it to self cleanse?
As I said earlier in this thread and in every other thread about this topic, as well as every topic about Bone Dragon, going back months - I’ve probably said it well over 100 times:
It’s not about difficulty or wins or losses. It’s about MONOTONY. When every team you face is fronted by a Deathknight, it’s a clear indicator of a problem. That’s game design 101. And for everyone facing those teams, every match looks and plays the same. It’s not hard, it’s not challenging, it’s not even clever. It’s just boring.
Like I said when you attempted to run that arguement against Maw and Bone Dragon. No the basis is the losing, either of troops or battles.
This is evident because you have been advocating for a change to Deathmark rather than Deathknight in this thread.
Changing Deathmark now has implications for all Deathmark troops not just the hero class that has caused some minimal Guild Wars points losses and thus induced some rage because some players couldn’t win with the team they made.
Succubus, Revenant, Death, Penitent and the hero weapons will be far less useful now. Not to mention the change will also cause the warded trait to be a wasted spot now. Casting more troops into redundancy does nothing to combat the perceived ‘monotony’ you think exists.
Because it can kill the opposing teams troops. So then by extension, players (including you) are complaining about your troops being killed. If they weren’t, why all belly aching?
There are other cases where Deathmark had no defense when being applied with skull damage and on your following turn the troop in question would die with no room to deal with this debuff. It follows the same random and unfun case of devouring on Skull damage. Happens here and there, but when it happens has usually a huge negative impact on the player…
I would agree with a change to Death Knight only, but the devs decided on this path probably because leaving Deathmark untouched could eventually cause another comotion in the future.
Of course it should have a negative impact otherwise what’s the point?
There are other classes/troops that have similar traits (Archer, Assassin, Cthyxryx etc) that can quickly dispatch troops from or near full health, randomly as you put it.
Very little noise about them.
That further supports my argument that the whining is more about players losing troops to this class and being inflexible as to how they approach Guild Wars battles.
Either run a riskier all same colour team or drop a colour off, if and when the opponent troops dictate.
Here @htismaqe proves my point above to perfection.
Try using Lion Prince, stun skull hit does wonders when paired with any of the red skull generators. Armoured also will improved the front rank survivabilty by 25% against incoming skull damage.
There are 13 classes and exactly ONE of them is being used in GW.
In high-level PVP, maybe three? Maybe?
There’s really no comparison to the other classes, at all.
If you want to argue that it’s a difference in degree, not kind, that’s fine. But it’s an order of magnitude in degree above Archer and Assassin.
–Automatically triggers VS conditional trigger
–10% chance times 4 troops recurring each round VS 10 or 15% chance times 1 troop triggers once
And two orders of magnitude beyond the other TEN classes.
So, it’s safe to say that this is the definition of imbalanced.
Because DK got an insane amount of outrage hype on the forums from people that refused to take any of the foolproof measures to fight the DK trait.
So people swarmed to put him up, and ignored the abysmal defense win/loss ratio that DK Teams have compared to countless more effective defense teams.
Nope it is actually easier to avoid DKs trait trigger than it is to avoid random skull matches dropping in for the enemy.
…for every single skullmatch without being able to prevent it with dispell, or immunities, there is no immunity for instant kills.
Anyways the discussion is moot now since the change is a done deal and i’ll give you one point for
100% agree, that was my issue with the trait once it was announced in its changed form, and Deathmark in general is also not a very engaging mechanic.
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