An Observation (in General)

For a while now, the top five characters - The Apocalypse Book, Gyaxx, Magnus, Almuric and Bartlett have been unbeatable to anyone outside of this group.

There is now a nice separation of score between these five and the rest of the field. Previously at least one of the top five was beatable by someone outside this group which helped keep the scores of the rest of the field up.

As a result the scores of those just outside the top five have fallen quite alot (check out the Score graphs for Black Caesar, Cougars, Death Spawn etc).

I'm not complaining about it, just making an observation and wondering how long the top 5 can keep their gap on the rest of the field.

hopefully not to much longer. :)

I'd noticed the gap in scores as well. There are two bands below the top that don't seem to change too, the immediate band is 700k and above and then there is a large chunk of teams - mine included who seem to be stuck in the 500k-600k score range. I guess that we're all preying on each other in that band so our scores stay there. I can't currently beat one team in the 700k+ bracket in one battle, so there's no hope of me getting above that score. Which has a knock on affect on those attacking me - none of us can climb up in score by farming higher score teams. I guess patience needs to come into play now. I just need to wait either until I can break into the 700k+ bracket or one of my fightlist do.....=/

Please look at those top 5 characters MPR, NW, and strat to see why those particular ones are at the top.

Its not rocket scienceto see why those 5 are where they are.

<sarcasm> It's not fair! The top five characters belong to the players that spend the most time, effort and money in the game! We need a rescale so I can beat them! </sarcasm>

And Carnt Spall, I know that's not what you're saying...

LOL

I'm certainly not whining about it. I know that I've done ok getting to where I am without a NUB in just over 3 months. But the glass ceiling that I'm hitting is pretty frustrating!

EEET, EETM EEMM were always the dominating strats in CB1. Especially coupled with high NW and plenty of time put into fighting. All hail the new boss same as the old boss.... =)

This is just a personal opinion, but I think you would get to the next level, by adding minions. Wait you say, my rewards will suck, I need these good two minion rewards to close the gap on the top characters. Perhaps you do, but consider this. If your PR in comparison to the score of your opponents begins to get close, then the amount of rewards you get will decrease. If you cannot through application of strat tinkering (I almost included NW, but anyway) make your PR and scores of the people you are able to beat gap widen, then you are getting decreasing returns on your BA investment. Sure you have better rewards with two minions vs three, but if it is causing you to stay in one place, unable to climb the score ladder higher and higher, are you really doing yourself any good?

In the end, if you wait too long to hire all your minions, you end up spending millions of CB2 $ to buy a minion whose power in comparison to your highest powered minion is so small they are virtually ineffective except in the adding of HP category. Thats pretty much what happened to my 4th minion. His DM was so petty I simply said enough, added some armor, and called him wall #2.

Here is an easy thing to do. Find out what your next minion will cost, and divide that by 3. It will tell you how much exp you will have to spend on that minion. Then compare that total to any of your other minions trained stats to see how close they would come to being helpful, and I think you will see what I am saying here. I honestly now believe that the sooner you hire all your minions the better, for you can begin the process of adding experience to all of them sooner :)

Sefton, your advice is very welcome and a little bit telepathic. I just added the second minion today. 4 minions is the aim.... but there's what a mage team with high rewards can spend his/her money on - the cost of minions; may be a few weeks before I'm a 4 minion team!

Ranger, I'm certainly not saying that their shouldn't be a gap at the top of the field, those 5 all have excellent strats and high PR. I'm just noting that this is the first time I've seen a group like this separate itself from the rest of the field. Before there were only one or two who couldn't be beaten by anyone, now there is 5.