The Single Shot Mage (in General)

Has anyone ever explored the pros/cons of a single-shot FB mage minion?

Take a look at my character The Last Samurai. I am about to replace that Heavy Crossbow with an Assassin's Crossbow. Once I do that, I'm going to unlearn EC on the front enchanter and train it all into FB. No HP's. In effect, the front minion (whom I do NOT want to live into melee and start frying my other minions) will shoot one hefty FB shot, and then die off.

I'm still getting DX reduction without EC due to the axbow, so this change will basically just improve on my current strategy by doing a fair amount of initial damage. Of course, since the FB spell will be trained to a much higher level than the CoC minion's spell, anyone using seekers will waste one round of ranged attacking someone meant to die anyway, but I consider this only a small benefit.

Thoughts?

When I first got my Fire Familiar it almost never fired past the first round. So one round of extra damage and no more. But that one round of extra damage made a massive difference to my fight list at the time, lifting me up nearly 150k in score.

My view is that extra damage would be worth more to you than the EC which can be killed by an equivalent DM anyhow. That axbow will once it's large enough do more than the EC without the danger from DM. If you get a large enough shot in first round you can cut through larger teams a lot easier. I suspect other people have done it but I'd be interested to see how well it works...

I've tried a team of four minions with nothing but fireball trained (a strategy idea I stole off Majestik Moose way back in CB1). Works very well against teams that don't use AMF or FB... one of these mages doesn't make that much damage though.

What are the numbers again... something like 30% 20% 10% penatlies to fireball in the ranged rounds. I'm pretty sure it still works like that, as you get closer you do more damage. You're better off lasting two rounds by training HP and Fireball.

EC is unaffected by DM unless it is your own DM jonnywas. Yet I think this idea is worth much more then the EC you have now as it will make you more effective against more then just tanks.

LOL GPV, blame the hot weather in London. I've been here long enough to know better than that!

Someone once pondered creating a team that has no hitpoints and one big fireball then getting someone else to do the same then fighting each other exclusively.

not a bad idea myonax :P

Your rewards per fight go down if you fight the same person (or small set of people) exclusively. Not sure how long it takes before you'd notice though.

Are you sure that's not because your lowering the opponents score spite the fact the list on your left isn't updated. Score is adjusted regularly after every fight, the fight list is not.

" Your rewards per fight go down if you fight the same person (or small set of people) exclusively."
--Sukotto

GPV, I think I recall something back in CB1 about this and it didn't have anything to do with score. At any rate, I'm going to try out the FB thing, But what Mr. Chuckles said about the percentages kind of worries me. Do you guys have any other ideas for retraining that one minion after I get my axbow?