[Reported/Investigating] Rowanne Armor Loss Bug

[Mithran]

@Jonathan

I’m reasonably sure this is the result of Death Mark ‘triggering’ whilst a troop has Barrier

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 don’t 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.

Jotnar buff needs

This is a thing? (Just checked - yep, its a thing). Thank you so much for this - it means I can add Forest Guardian to the list of things I can reliably counter deathknight in normal PvP with without having to severely pull my punches. Is this intended to be a thing, though? It seems kind of odd that it takes armor. I’m not advocating removing it by any means but this interaction seems a bit… odd. Kind of seems like it should either block death mark activation and have it cleanse right th…

Also brought it up here:

Something wrong with damage dealed to Drake Rider

As of 3.5, traits that trigger when taking damage (orc traits, counterattack, frenzy) also started triggering even if the damage you took only hit armor. However, straight armor reduction still doesn’t count as “damage” with respect to barrier interactions, which is my litmus test to whether something is “damage” or “not damage”, which means these traits are specifically coded to also trigger from armor reduction. However, also in 3.5, having your armor burning will now hit and consume the ba…

I’m bringing this up because this interaction has existed for so long that the least disruptive “bugfix” 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 didn’t exist, and very few things were death mark immune). Either way, please consider the larger implications a given fix would bring.