What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
During Tower of Doom Battle, Rowanne went from 1000 armor to 1 armor for no explicable reason. None of the spells or traits of the opposing team seem to explain why she dropped from 1000 armor to 1 armor, see linked video.
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
Happened on May 22, 2020 on Xbox
Steps to make it happen again
Was fighting against: Ultimate Doom of Ice, Hyndla Frostcrown, Ice Goblin, Borealisā¦ Rowanne was at 1000 armor with a Barrier, Enraged, and Deathmarked, the enemy (Borealis) made a 3-blue gem match which was the only thing that happened during their turn, upon the start of my turn, Reinforced activated and Rowanneās armor went from 1000 to 1, she also lost the barrier, but deathmark was still appliedā¦
Iām reasonably sure this is the result of Death Mark ātriggeringā whilst a troop has Barrier, but I can definitely understand why this would seem strange (i.e., Why remove Armor at all if the Barrier is blocking it? Why just Armor and not Life? Why does Barrier block Death Mark? Etc.)
(The ā1ā Armor I believe would be from her Reinforced trait)
This was initially documented a long long while back, and is absolutely still the case - Death Mark activation hitting barrier Barrier will take all armor and let the troop survive (with no barrier, but deathmark still on). Just confirmed it using Celestasia. Also confirmed you donāt have to have any armor for barrier to block a deathmark (which I was unsure about doing my tests years ago).
Earliest mention I can see of it working this way was May 2017, though it likely always worked like this.
Also brought it up here:
Iām bringing this up because this interaction has existed for so long that the least disruptive ābugfixā to this weird interaction would be that Death Mark activation is completely blocked by Barrier, since a troop with barrier would historically always survive a death mark activation. Changing Death Mark activation to go through barrier completely would qualify as a balance change by removing long standing counterplay to Death Mark. Death Mark is a lot more reasonable than when we actually needed this as counterplay, though (the first linked post was from before Death Mark had a one turn grace period, bless and undying didnāt exist, and very few things were death mark immune). Either way, please consider the larger implications a given fix would bring.
Usually the troop just dies, taking its Death Mark with it, so you donāt really get to see what happens to the Death Mark afterwards.
I get what youāre saying on an intuitive level, as itās what I think I expected to happen initially as well ā but in the context of GoW status effects, it still needs to be cleansed whether by death, by the cumulative 10% auto-cleanse (/Orpheus medals), or manually.
Without being cleansed, the chance for the troop to be dealt lethal damage by the Death Mark (maybe it helps if phrased like that) just increases by another 10% for the next turn.
Totally on board with this. No need for Armor to be removed, and ignoring Barrier would need significant balance rationale.
Further to thisā¦ There have been a couple of times where Iāve simply waited an extra turn or two for the Death Mark on my Barrier-ed High King Irongut to proc to remove the Barrier so that I can Devour him with VashāDagon, rather than going through the trouble of casting Vash twice.
