I didn’t assume, look at the first formula I used. However, judging off how other status effects have worked with deathmark, it’s not unreasonable to assume that on some rolls it has below that. The problem with the way you did your formula is that you always assume that deathmark will not hit with the cleanse at the same time, which lowers the amount of times it’s going to kill. I make this assumption off the way it has worked with other status effects. You made your formulas assuming cleanse and deathmark will never be on the same #s that the computer rolls, I made mine based on the fact that they could be. However, I base mine on the fact that I’ve seen multiple status effects go off in a single turn, and assume that cleanse works with that. I think the computer only rolls once, and there’s a priority to all the statuses (like Cleanse > Burn > Deathmark > Poison, etc.).
I’m not sure how what you’re saying is incompatible with what I’m saying. Already my pseudocode above has separate rolls. Let’s expand it a bit, with a few made-up numbers:
if (rand(100) < 10 * debuffAge) { cleanseDebuffsExceptPoison(); } // Roll #1
if (hasDeathmark) { if (rand(100) < 10) { die(); } } // Roll #2
if (hasPoison) { if (rand(100) < 50) { takePoisonDamage(); } } // Roll #3
if (hasBurning) { if (rand(100) < 50) { takeBurningDamage(); } } // Roll #4
etc.
Those are independent rolls and can all succeed or fail on a given turn – except if cleanse goes off, the troop is cleansed of everything except poison. If it does not, the troop can take poison and burning damage on the same turn, since the two coinflips are independent.
In that scenario, Roll #1 corresponds to a check for condition “A” above, and roll #2 corresponds to a check for condition “B”. If “A” passes, “B” can’t happen. If “B” passes, the troop is dead. Otherwise, “C” happens.
I’ll be blantantly honest, I know I started it, but I really do not wish to continue this debate because I simply don’t have much invested in it. 25% or 31%, both are nearly the same, which is too high of a free kill with no chance to do anything.
First thing, imho @Lyya’s math is right. Secondly, .25 and .31 sure as h*ll is a huge difference. If it happens in 1 out of 4 or nearly 1 out of 3 does indeed make a difference.
25% is too high, 31% is also too high. Whether it’s happening 1 out of every 3 casts, or 1 out of every 10 casts, nothing should be essentially unable to be countered. While Maw’s devour is annoying, it’s a single cast, not a multi cast, with extra abilities.
EDIT: In that reference, 25% or 31% isn’t a big difference.
Whatever happens with deathmark, I hope it’s not nerfed too much. I’ve been having A LOT of fun with it.
I’m finding I win about the same amount with deathmark teams, as I do with any other good team I use.
If anything, deathmark is more risky for me, and keeps the tension high. SO FUN! 
Not a free kill. Cost is the mana that is used to cast the spell, which may not even kill any troops.
So for whatever the Death spell costs you get a 1in3 chance to kill a troop.
Famine one shot troops for a 20 mana cost.
Death mark needs to kill reasonably frequently for it to be usable.
You can counter it by:
Killing the troop that casts Deathmark
Mana drain
Silence
Cleanse
resistance from traits
Using Lyya’s formula, the 31.5% chance is for One troop to be killed. Not all of them.
The death of one of your troops sounds no different than a lucky Mercy + Maw streak that eats a troop turn 1.
I’d honestly sooner place my bets in a fully-traited Orion. At least that’s a 75% chance of True Shotting.
Pedantically, it’s 31.5% chance for at least one troop to die turn 1. If you are unlucky, of course, more than one might die. The odds of a complete team wipe in turn 1 is quite low, though (less that one hundredth of one percent).
I am not going to say you are wrong on this, what i will say is i can’t wait for someone to get a full team wipe with deathmark and share a video.
Roughly 1 in 15241 chance heh. That is on par with flipping a coin 14 times and getting heads each time.
The adjustment to deathmark was actually a suggestion in a thread I started (thanks for listening @Sirrian) as I felt that a troop having 2 turns where it can naturally cleanse before even having a chance to die was underwhelming and I have indeed seen deathmark (as well as poison, burn, and frozen) clense on the 1st turn (in the case of burn and poison do damage was delt and no life was lost respectively)
My suggestion in the thread that if an immediate effect could be taken by deathmark that perhaps there should be a cumulative 5% chance to die (as a cumulative 10% chance to heal would make the chance of death always be 1/2 the chance to heal)
My other suggestion was to keep the 10% thing even but not allow a troop to naturally heal for the same 2 turns so that it wouldn’t clense before it even gets a chance to do its thing
You can find my original post below
I am happy your suggestion made it into the game.
Thanks (10 characters)
So many people do not realize their requests are heard and implimented so thanks to your suggestion deathmark got a buff that was definitely needed is here.
For those curious, if a troop gets deathmarked, and the debuff is not cleansed, after 10 turns the troop has a 23.23% chance to die. The troop’s chances to die are as follows:
Turn | Mortality per turn (if still deathmarked) | Cumulative mortality
---- | ----------------------------------------- | --------------------
1 | 9% | 9.00%
2 | 8% | 15.48%
3 | 7% | 19.56%
4 | 6% | 21.77%
5 | 5% | 22.76%
6 | 4% | 23.12%
7 | 3% | 23.21%
8 | 2% | 23.23%
9 | 1% | 23.23%
10 | 0% | 23.23%
The formula to determine total mortality after 10 turns is daunting:
1.0 - ((0.1 * 1.0) + (0.9 * 0.9)((0.2 * 1.0) + (0.8 * 0.9)((0.3 * 1.0) + (0.7 * 0.9)((0.4 * 1.0) + (0.6 * 0.9)((0.5 * 1.0) + (0.5 * 0.9)((0.6 * 1.0) + (0.4 * 0.9)((0.7 * 1.0) + (0.3 * 0.9)((0.8 * 1.0) + (0.2 * 0.9)((0.9 * 1.0) + (0.1 * 0.9)((1.0 * 1.0) + (0.0 * 0.9)))))))))))
I think possibly using a 5% cumulative death/10% cumulative heal chance may be reasonable especially considering the reaper that looms around the corner, a smaller chance to die on turn 1 (compare to its current state (provides a greater chance to “troop cleanse” in the first turn while still getting a chance to trigger)), the same chance to die turn 2 (again compaired to the current state), then a greater chance to die every turn after (compared to its current state but while always having a chance to heal that’s twice as much as the death chance)
This will accomplish 2 things,
First: it reduces the chance to trigger on the first turn to 1/20 from 1/10 allowing a greater chance to be cleansed via mercy and the like, and,
Second: it allows a greater chance to trigger beyond the 2nd turn that will make deathmark seem like the one status effect you would refuse to cast Mercy in favor of cleansing.
Of course this also has a chance of making the trait even more overpowered…
I’d like to see what other people think in this matter
First thought is that sounds over-complicated… Let’s see what happens, shall we…
So best death mark teams?