“Touch” trait status effects (Chill Touch, Death Touch, Venemous, Plague Touch, Aflame, Knockout, Snare, and possibly Silence!) only apply if the damage dealt when matching skulls was above zero eg., with 4 or 5 matches even if entangled. It doesn’t matter if the damage is completely absorbed by the barrier or hits only armor, this still counts as “dealing damage” for the purposes of this trait. Agile will also prevent the status effects from applying, though, if it triggers. Psion’s Siphon also seems to fit into this category.
On skull hit “procs”, like Maw’s old hunger (presumable extends to Kruarg’s Voracious), Assassinate, and Bullseye will trigger even if you are at zero attack, and get a simple match 3 skulls. They dont care about Barrier or Entangle. Have not ever observed Agile and these traits triggering at the same time, but my assumption is it would not matter. Based on my observations with pre-nerf Hunger, this is because Hunger would need to trigger before skull damage is even tested to properly devour the correct target. In the patches right before Hunger was changed and after Impervious was buffed, a Hunger trigger would completely nullify your own skull damage so it wouldn’t “spill over” to the next troop, leaving you doing no damage to Impervious troops when it triggered.
Buff from skull hits like Maw’s current Hunger, Virtue of Courage (and presumably Drakkulis third trait) don’t care whether or not damage was actually dealt, only when skulls are matched (though attack cannot be buffed while entangled). Drakkulis fits into this category presumably because he used to be able to gain life in any slot, but the trait was changed to only work if he was in the first position. Since this was changed on a weekly push and not a major patch, it is highly unlikely they re-coded the entire trait.
Traits that trigger when the user takes skull damage, eg., Bone Dragon’s Frozen Soul triggers regardless if the user takes damage. Presumably, Sheggra’s third trait also works like this. Have not tested how Hydra’s trait interacts with this, but presumably it deals damage regardless if any damage was dealt.
I’ve heard reports that Gloom Leaf can reflect potential skull damage even if he has barrier regardless of damage was dealt, but I can’t personally attest to this. If no damage was done due to attack being zero or the user having entangle, though, none is reflected.
I believe most of these are working as intended (and have always worked this way) but we could use more consistency or clarification with different language. For example, traits that require the user to “take damage” will only apply if the user’s life is reduced, but traits triggering when you “deal skull damage” only need to “hit” the target regardless of if they have barrier or armor left. Perhaps the language should be changed to “when I hit with skulls”, which would make it more clear in what they do and differentiate them, but this could still provoke some confusion on the entangle issue, as a zero damage hit counts as a miss.
“When I match skulls” makes more sense for Assassinate, in my opinion but I believe they had the description as something similar and people complained that they thought it meant the trait could work regardless of the Assassin’s position.
