some tattoo noticings... (in General)

What I seem to be noticing about tattoos, is that the only ones that people are complaining over, is the tattoo of jigorokano. So I was wondering, there are other tattoos that train familiars, but none even come close to having the power of a jigorokano. That’s when I realized it, no other tattoo TRAINS HP! The only reason people make such a big deal out of it, is because its like a giant meat shield that fights back. I say take away the meat! Make the character supply it through Ablative Shield like he has to do for every other tattoo, and you will see that it will level out quickly. The only reason a tattoo can beat spid by itself, was because it has plenty of dex to avoid some hits, but it also had an enormous amount of HP. I think that all of a tattoos hp should always have to come from a character. That way you guarantee, that a character is only as strong as its weakest link. Therefore, to beat tattoos easier, one only has to increase their DM, making the spell more viable, and making tattoos less of a game controller and more of just an asset to a team….just like the other tattoos.

You've done a great job of restating what a ton of different people have said in a ton of different words.

With that logic, that makes Dispel Magic a must have which negates AMF use. Not a good idea.

Ive stated this before and ill say it again, the ToJ is a UC minion, due to lack of armor (and thus, lack of +s to protect from magic) UC minions need a ton of HP to survive (or a huge pair of DBs, but seeing as tattoos can wear equipment....). A UC minions greatest threat is a mage. Training alot of hp counters a huge DD to some extent, but not for long.

A ToJ is about 40% power of a single tank that wears it continuously. It also only puts 1/3 of that experience into HP. That is not a lot of hit points. (That also means it's slightly more powerful than a tank on a 3 minion team. It is weaker than a tank on 2 or or 1 minion teams.)

The reason that ToJs seem strong right now is
1. People wear outsize ToJs. This is like equipping a $45 million Loch on a 100k character. Of course it seems unbalanced.
2. UC, as a skill, is more powerful than weapons at low levels of weapon net worth (what we have now). After 500k power on CB1, it became much less of a factor.
3. Most people are using 4 minion teams so weak tanks like the ToJ's have magnified effectiveness.

All these things work together to make ToJs more a meatshield than death incarnate at higher levels/ Higher level players already report it.

This brings us to your "remove the meat" point.
That is rediculous. If someone can't kill a current ToJ in the 3 ranged rounds before it starts doing damage, than either (1) the ToJ is outsize and should be pasting them, (2) they are less than 70% of the power of character weilding the ToJ and deserve to lose (3) they don't know how to build a character or (4) they have a 4 minion team and you just slaughtered 3/4 of it. None of these are unbalanced game scenarios.\

Of course, most people who whine about ToJs don't bother thinking about it beyond the "I'm getting my rear handed to me by a ToJ" line. This is usually an excuse.

Looking at your characters, your higher power character is easily shreaded by teams that train either AMF or DM (hint: most teams train one or the other), and your lower power character will get it's tattoo killed in the first round by any team dealing any type of damage, period. Neither of your teams has any tank character. Neither is wearing so much armor as leather gloves.

I would posit that your problems do not come from ToJ balance issue.

As a suggestion, if you don't want to shell out money for a ToJ and you want a meatshield, buy one of the 10 LToEs in auctions now, put it on your single mage, and put the LToS on your 4 minion team where it might not be useless.

And at least get some cheap armor. There's a reason why people wear armor, you know.

And before you say an aspect of the game is unbalanced, look at your strategy for 5 minutes.

THey train HP as well as endurance, that's like having a free ToE minion. Yet better than just ToE, especially it reduces threats from FB and CoC due to the fact that an extra minion means diluted damage from these spells. Ultimately almost double the effect of what a normal ToE can help the team.

well actually in summary, I dont mind they have another 10% higher HP trained. Just remove or half the endurance (data shows almost on par to a same level ToE) and it's balanced.

UC dude with innate evasion + HP + endurance just doesn't make sense to me as something balanced in the long run.

ok i probbably missed it somewhere but..where does it say the ToJ trains endurance? If nowhere but it acts like it, maybe jon threw in a little bonus to UC skill thats just undocumented....

taking a quick look i see it now...though that gets me to think..if UC provides innate evasion why say it also trains it?...perhaps evasion and endurance are both part of the UC skill now and he just broke it up in the description?

It says here :D

Oh and the link is from item meta stat if you thought I made that up :P

like i said, i saw it a few moments after i posted..but that brought me to my thought i had that UC skill now has some evasion and endurance built in. Something i had hoped for in CB1 to counter the magic weakness that UC minions had :P

Maybe, but that would probably have been documented at least on the train description page...

I think that ToJ's were given Evasion and Endurance as intrinsics to counter the fact that they can't use items. Their damage is always gonna be low, but with Evasion from UC, natural Evasion and Endurance coupled with thier natural HPs make them a very sturdy lump.

They also have natural dex to reduce the amount of double hits they take.

And all this for free, so to speak.

Apart from damage (which with the strength reduction took a blow) what more could you possibly want these things to do? ;)

hehe sorry, didn't read properly

Anyway.. i think endurance can only get from tattoo. If UC dude has endurance + ToE , he would be a stalemate machine :) (Not that UC can kill anyway :P)

UC minion+DB+ToE+HG = stalemate machine, except when meeting a CoBF minion. Which is a nice counter strat vs ToE/UC minion.

In my humble opinion, I agree to Nonsensical Knight about removing the Endurance on the Jig.

please correct me if im wrong but, it trains all that, so its experience is probably divded just like a regular minions right? meaning that a minion of the same level of a ToJ familiar would most likely have higher stats if it only trained 1 or 2 things over the ToJ that spreads its experience around. Which would mean removing the ToJ endurance wouldnt really show much nerfage since its not just doing training a higher endurance like a ToE, the damage reduction from endurance on the ToJ probably negates 5% or less damage but probably no more then 10%, which is completely acceptable for a UC minion, heck i think it should be added to the UC skill. Also, im pretty sure the endurance effect of a ToJ is for the familiar only, so its not confering it to the rest of the team. Remember, it is a supporter item, and being the first one, yes it does tip over how things are done. Im sure the GoP back in CB1 did the same thing. Supporter items are supposed to give that little umph to the supporter anyway. While i agree with the tattos being taken from rentals, I think asking to nerf the ToJ further then the mini one yesterday about fighting up is a mistake...anyone remember IAs?

1) I do 4-6k damage normally.
2) To a jig i do 1-2k damage.
3) 5%?