Can melee cut the mustard? (in General)

Hi guys.

I'm really considering dropping my tank altogether and going mage. This would mean I'm unable to use my MgS, but I have a few concerns.

With the damage boost to physical, Ranged (well ELB+Archery+Belegs) has become a viable damage dealer alongside magic. Especially if you have a lot of money to pump into your ELB. It has no downside.

Melee, has to deal with CBF s that are growing and keep on growing. Not a problem I tohught, I'll get one myself, and as I up it, non CBF wearers are going to have a hard time facing me.

But I was mistaken in my understanding of how a CBF reduces other CBF splash damage. I didn't know it working like the FB reduction and was based on the enchantment level of the cloak. :( Now, If I want ot melee versus the big cloaks, I have to have a cloak just as big.

Which leaves little if any cash to upgrade my weapon. And no matter how much XP I sink into my strength, without a nice X on my weapon, I'll do no damage.

Melee just seems to be to greedy in it's requirements to be effective.

To do damage it requires XP investment into two statistics (Strength and Dexterity) and financial investment into weapon X and +. On top of that, I need financial investment into a CBF, otherwise I'm just a swing away from a family feast bargain bucket.

Compared to Magic.

Which need XP investment into one statistic. the spell itself. Money is freely available to pump my CBF to ludicrous levels to cause every other Tank problems and all I have to worry about is keeping my DD over my opponents AMF by as a big a margin as possible.

Just give me one reason (I can't DO enough damage for VA to make a difference) that anyone should use melee (not ranged, that's great, but I'd have to sacrifice the CBF for Archery) over a DD spell? If you only want to attack in melee, use CoC.

If I'm lucky, I hit for between 10-20K with my weapon. Sometimes twice a round!

If I ploughed my xp from str and dex into MM, I'd get a 150K damage MM.

At least 7.5 times more damage than I'm doing at the moment... And harder for the ToE s to reduce...

*Shrugs*

Archery does make a big difference to a tank. My medium size compound is hitting for 20-25k per hit and with the extra dx from the ToA I'm getting double hits almost every round against most of my opponents. 180k in ranged is a nice amount. But even with the rented morg I'm using at the moment I'm only hitting for half that amount on average in melee. The upgrade costs are starting to look a little pricy now my bow and my katana are in the early X40's, and the amount of damage you're getting for your money starts to look a little foolish, especially as I was running a CoC mage team for a while who was hitting for an average of 50k per hit at 70kpr!

I won't be staying single tank for long I suspect either.

Oh wait, I've just upgraded my weapons, so I can't afford another minion either! =/

XP in Str & Dex, Cash in X, + & CBF

Vs

XP in DD.

Hmmm.....

Melee can deal more damage from bloodlust obviously but it's definitely looking weak in comparison to other areas. Maybe a bit more of a boost to melee damage levels? CoC when it got it's boost got 40% remember - physical damage only gets 10....

Maybe if dispel magic didn't affect VA? Would that help? The old bloodlust/va melee tank used to do quite well didn't it in CB1.

It used to look like UC was the runt of the litter as far as physical damage was concerned but melee is crawling off coughing weakly in the corner at the moment....

XP in to FB gives about 20% damage of level
............MM gives about 40% " " "
............CoC gives about 80% " " " (against a single minion) *only melee

XP *(evenly) in ST/DX gives around 50% in both ranged and melee, but then add nw...

?

BL with melee would do more damage overall than Archery + Belegs (Bigger bonus, more rounds to do it in), but that gives a downside. You take more damage and have to face CBF s.

Even then, (In my case, but I'm sure it applies to most tanks) BL would bring me up to doing 25-50K. If I hit a double every round, I'd still be doing less than if I changed to DD.


:(

Will, I'm sure that the three DD spells give in the region of 1/2 their level (not effect) as damage.

they don't, they all have different levels. coc is larger because it can only work in melee. MM is larger than FB because it only hits on minion at a time...

plus those are approximate values... so dont slate me for them! :P

eg: 1000 level in FB would dish out 200 damage
MM, 400
CoC 800

Sorry Will, Doh! I realised I left out the CoC 40% increase... :)

But FB (on a single target) does slightly more damage than MM of the same level does.

So even if it's as low as 40% of the level, a 300K MM would do 120K per round.

Instead of the 40K I might do.

FB and CoC (ignoring multiple targets and the CBF) would do even more.

Here is a possible solution:

Currently a dd spell at a given level will affect 2 minions equally given that they have the same AC, endurance and protection. It doesn't matter if one minion has 100 each of HP, Dex and Strength, and the other minion has 1000 each of HP, Dex and Strength.

An equalizer for tanks would be to factor their hard earned stats into how much effect a given dd spell does. Huge strength and dex should seem to help to thwart off some of the damage from that pesky fireball. Ouch, what was that?, instead of, Ugh! That hurt big time. DD spells strengthen with experience. Tanks' effectiveness also strengthens with experience--the ability to avoid dd spells should not only depend on the net worth of your armor, or diluting the experience by adding more enchantments like protection, amf etc.

You know, I have less than half your ST, but my MPB is 87k. I also get triple hits on a reasonably regular basis. So I think tanks are viable, with a good weapon.

/me can't wait to get to 200k ST...or even 100k.

"Huge strength and dex should seem to help to thwart off some of the damage from that pesky fireball. Ouch, what was that?, instead of, Ugh! That hurt big time."

Hear, hear!! I always thought it was weird that tanks take full damage from magic. I mean, don't those rippling muscles do something to stop the damage?

Cae, you have BL to give you an extra 120% damage on top of your normal damage.

This means you that while you do good melee damage you have no protection from CBF s at all.

How much damage do you take from one of the +50 ones? I dread to think how much you take from the +126...

Now if you dropped melee, put your xp from str and dex into a DD spell, not only would you do more damage, take less damage (no BL) you wouldn't have to worry about CBF s.

What point is there to melee?

I was trying not to post, because I have a feeling I am sometimes a harbringer of doom, but felt because I have seen and experienced what GL is talking about, I could add some useful information. I will try to do only that....

Basically speaking, I combat the what to do in melee so that it affects all the tanks and enchanters properly and also the mages and or CoBF wearers properly. Here is my solution, get two minions to survive to melee, give one a missle weapon only with a big CoBF, then the tank gets the big melee with VA backing it. So if they have have the CoBF, then the tank does some damage before the CoBF kills it, but missles go unpunished. And typically if they wear a big CoBF they are not that tough otherwise, so I either whittle enough away with my ranged peppered shots, or we stalemate. Either way, that person it not likely to fight you often, BUT if there is no CoBF I get the benifit of a big damage melee and VA, often as a hedge against big GA.

In the end you get a flexible ability to adapt to a variety of opponents. I personally think that if you say OK Im going all DD forget that nonsense then you become unflexible, but a tank with a variety of gear selections and a variety of gear positionings allows you to be a lot more flexible and adapt to a wider variety of opponents. You were looking at it too closely IMHO, where instead it is the big picture flexibility that is the real secret to a tank vs DD spell success. So go all DD, Ill use big Elbow and Seekers and wont worry too much about that. Go all tank big melee Ill use Big CoBF and wont worry too much about that and go all CoBF Ill use lots of HP big AC and ranged during melee. Try that will your Fireball :)

Sefton, I think you are missing one of GL's biggest constraints: lack of cash.

Sure, we'd all love to have two or three massive tanks and a net worth north of 40 million. But that just isn't happening for those of us who don't have the time to camp (your case) or the USD to pump in (the case for several others).

GL is trying to get maximum offensive output under two very real constraints (for most of us) -- 1. The absolute requirement to have a CBF at higher levels and to keep pumping it (something I truly despise about CB2), and 2. Having only a nominal Net Worth. Your ideas are great, I just don't see them helping GL's quandary much considering he already has trouble keeping a ranged and melee weapon up to snuff while still needing to smith his CBF.

And if I drop the CBF, I HAVE to drop melee...

It's really as simple as that. (Or admit I'm never going to be in the top 49...)

:(

But it's not just a cash issue (although that is a large part of the problem) it's just compared to magic, melee is greedy with xp as well.

On top of that having to spread my cash over my weapon and my CBF, every other option for doing damage seems much more viable.

Well, apart from UC. But we all know that's the true red headed step child of CB2! ;)

Well certainly having more cash is a good thing, and yah CoBF's are not likely to continue long in their current state, but I dont think lack of cash precludes a flexible strat. Basically speaking if you do ranged in melee the biggest CoBF is worthless, even if its paltry ranged, my ranged in melee comes from an x25 +25 exbow and about 27K ST. If people stalemate against you they will stop figthing you. But that ranged damage is insufficient to win fights against non-CoBF's so you have to have melee as well.

Look at your own strat Chet, and your NW and tell me how much DD spells scare you? If your comboed AMF isn't biggest in game I would be surprised. So, you are able to combat DD spells without much NW, granted, you need NW to combat tanks, but I think that goes to my point not against it. There are many ways to skin a mage, but you are gonna need some serious jack if you want a piece of my tanks hide.

After being soudly trumped by an all EC team as my single Tank I decided I wanted flexibility by having both physical and magical damage on my team. It's hard to do that with one minion though.

But physical damage is proving to be far to expensive for it's worth. In both xp and cash costs.

I suppose I could just drop the CBF, get and pump an ELB and Archery and refuse to equip a melee weapon. I'm sure with a large enough ELB I'll do enough damage in melee to kill. Especially if I take out 3 minions in ranged.

But for the amount of xp spend on Str, Dex, Archery (and with a normal amount of cash) I'm sure I could get the same, if not more damage from just training a DD spell.

What would I lose in flexibilty? I'll be weaker to AMF, but immune to EC. My big mage will be at the front, so seekers won't matter. I won't have to worry 'bout CBF s as long as I don't choose FB (but then now, why would anyone aiming for the top every choose FB?). The only thing I'd be slightly worse off for is double hits from Dex. But I'm never going to keep up with ToA tanks anyway.

How about enchanter+tank+mage?
Put the CoBF and heavy armor on the tank, with only STR and HP trained (only little DX, say 10%).
Put a ToE on the mage (so you also get the protection from AMF backslash).
Make it a CoC or FB mage.
Add a AMF/AS enchanter (more HP -> the ToE becomes more effective; moreover, it gives at least 1 extra round against archers).
In this way, you do get the extra flexibility (if you want it), without having to equip another tank.

Against tanks not using CoBF, you get an easy victory from the cloak (unless they are archers and kill your tank in ranged...).
Against mages, your tank should be able to compete, due to the fact that it does not waste exp on DX.
If CoBF teams become a big problem, switch from AMF to DM, learn a base decay on the enchanter (just in case you meet some single minion without AMF), and kill them with the CoC mage (the tank dies quickly after having hit the wall, but the opponent remains with little HP and no tank).
On the other hand, single mages will be problematic if you switch to DM.
But you cannot hope to be able to beat both multi-minion AND single mage teams.

In all cases, you solve one of the big weakness of tanks, namely having to split exp between HP, STR and DX, since you do not train DX.

You are 100% correct, Sefton. The people I lose to now I lose BIG. A lot because of CBFs, but also just because of NW.

My combined AMF is around 230K. Not largest in the game, but substantial.