(My numbers are from the wiki, dunno if they are correct)
The team bounty gained from killing sprees is really higher than the lowest amount of gold you give at the lowest. Let's use a perfect example to illustrate team gold advantage, while looking at the gain and loss from utilizing the strategy, i.e. I'm not counting the basic bounty for killing the enemy:
1st death: -300 => Total: -300
2nd death: -274 => Total: -574
3rd death: -220 => Total: -794
4th death: -176 => Total: -970
5th death: -140 => Total: -1110
1st harvest: +450 => Total: -660
6th death: -112 => Total: -772
7th death: -90 => Total: -862
8th death: -72 => Total: -934
2nd harvest: +450 => total: -484
9th death: -58 => Total: -426
Only now are you set up to only cost 50 gold with each death, enemy currently sitting at tier 3.
Let's do the next two deaths so we have the cycle complete:
10th death: -50 => Total: -476
11th death: -50 => Total: -526
3rd harvest: +450 => Total: -76
At that point, every three deaths of you (-150) your team gets 90 gold per member on killing the target (+450).
I will admit that this isn't exactly negligible. And the perfect setup actually does make you almost break even, despite 11 deaths.
That said, you are still losing a lot of gold and xp from your own death time, while still giving the enemy a huge amount of experience.
And a team with 1110 gold advantage at its peak probably won't let you plan their own deaths this well, so it's unlikely to actually work out.
Might be fun to try out, but because of how massively this can backfire, this is something I wouldn't do unless literally everybody in your team is on board with it.
[Everything below was written when the math was still wrong... just didn't feel right to edit out my own fail:
That means that after setting it up perfectly, and then going through another 12 deaths and perfect harvests, your strategy netted you a whole 60 gold.
Meanwhile you have given the enemy 21 kills worth of experience, while having missed out on a lot of gold and experience due to death time.
And once again: This is the best case scenario where you always get killed without assists [and the enemy is always killed at the best possible point in their streak.
And all of that math is ignoring the fact that people tend to use early gold advantage to increase their gold advantage. That 922 team gold advantage won't make the enemy just sit on their asses doing nothing.
Interesting idea in principle, but the numbers simply don't work out, I'm afraid.
Edit: Plus I completely forgot that killing monsters and minions actually also gradually lowers your death streak... yeah, this strategy won't work.
Edit2: Math is off, missed one part of how bounties are calculated, will fix in a bit.]
