Ablative shield modification (in Changelog)

- AS multi-minion penalty is now assessed after DM.
- familiars count as minions for the purposes of this penalty now
- penalty for 5 minions is now 5% more than the penalty for 4 minions (formerly none); in other words, if you had 4 minions and a familiar before and AS effective level was N, now it is 0.95 N.

These penalties are applied during combat; in particular, they don't display on your home page any more.

do you mean AS?

AS or AMF?

er

yeah. AS.

guess I'd better edit it for the benefit of people who don't read this far down.

Must mean AS. Nice one!

Ow.

There's no penalty to my AS anymore, and I have 4 minions and a FF. What's up?

Evo:
These penalties are applied during combat; in particular, they don't display on your home page any more.

--Jonathan, 5:22 PM EDT

thanks. :)

AS is so passé. All the cool kids are learning HP straight up.

Word.

to your mother?

Not quite the DM nerf some were hoping for, but given the rock-paper-scissors nature of the game, I think it is quite reasonable. Am I to guess that AS still won't stack before DM is applied? (So if I cast 20k worth of AS from each of two minions and run into a 30k DM I still get zippo AS instead of 10k AS? Assume all figures are after multi-minion penalties, of course). I'd still like to see stacking of all enchantments prior to DM to provide coherency with the fight sequence (ED enchants cast within the circle of minions prior to EO enchants reaching them), but then again, what do I know.

Stacking multiple ED's prior to DM would be just the ticket to balance DM IMO. I've wanted that for a while now.

useful change, really hope it wasn't my fault, but it makes things fairer anywho

I usually understand why Jon makes certain changes but this one baffles me.

First, why are we favoring 4 Minion teams? With the removal of exp bonus for having 4 minions I thought CB2 was catering to more types of teams. This change penalizes the 2-3 Minion teams for having AS more heavily then a 4 minion team with a familiar. I am not a big fan of being pushed towards having a 4 minion team.

Second, what is the balancing goal of this change? Unless your going for a team where you purposely want your minion killed of (i.e. fireball) you NEED AS with a familiar. The Steel and Ice Tattoo are simply un-useable without a decent AS to keep them alive into melee. With ICE its even more needed because the tattoo is useless till melee. I just don't understand the intent of this change. Its almost a given (with the excepting of FF) that all teams with a familiar will have AS. The FF people won't be effected on way or the other on this they would prefer their tattoo be dead my Melee. This is just a big Ice/Steel nerf.

If the point was Jon thought 2 and three minion teams where abusing the AS penalty I would prefer a flat out familiar penalty to AS rather then this so we aren't restricted from only having familiars with 4 man teams to optimize exp returns.

I went from a 0 penalty to a 15% penalty. If I had 4 minions I would have only lost 5% of my AS.

What is the 4 Minion penalty for AS? If it was a total of 25% (15% from 3 +10% ) a 30% penalty (25% + 5% ) would make sense I suppose but it is still non-sensical to me.

On a side not what's the order for applying Armor enhancements to as?

((Base * Armor ) - DM) * MultiMinionPenalty = Effective AS

I am guessing?

your logic escapes me

"boo hoo, my familiar is now treated like a third minion"

yeah c'mon Myo, it ain't so bad. before now its been free gratis, nothing more

I think I'm better off this way.It means my AS is just a bit more stronger (i think) against the rampant number of DM users out there. I feel happy for my IF. Though I do feel that the HP to DD ratios on all the familiars leads to FF as an obvious choice.

But just stick around a bit longer, you never know what else change month will bring... unless your Jon. It is quite possible that some of the changes are designed to work together and cancel out their negative effects. Jon's wisdom may not be infinite, but it is often sound.

why not just train another minion.. i think its a lot more effective and you equip it

heh, Changemonth is always interesting :) /me hopes for another change month of epic proportions :P

sorry for the newb questions..but will my own DM cancel out AS now?

nope

heh, as just got nerfed for me >.>

i only have two minions and i want thinking of getting AS, now i get a penalty cause of my tattoo, thats a bummer.

also, it seems like AMF users got a bonus as well, as all of the AS casters out there now have to split it between another minion. since they were not casting dm, it wasnt being lowered at all.

so DM is slightly less effective
amf users get a tiny boost because jon weakened AS for them
and AS is much less appealing for a 2 minion team now than it ever was.

Familiars already have a problem that as time goes on they become less effective per the teams pr. The other tattoos enhance a team so suffer less from the fact that real minions will eventually outpace familiars. Now they are penalized the same as a normal minion.

And thanks for your sarcastic remarks Jon, I truly deserve that since I so often post inane remarks.

since familiars get a constant fraction of the XP that the rest of the team gets, I don't see where you're pulling this "less effective as time goes on" from as long as you're comparing apples to apples, i.e., a FF to a FB mage

In a 3 minion team I had a MM mage keep the same ratios of HP and DD that my IF had, which was 5 levels of DD for every 1 level of HP. I started the IF from level 20 and it eventually overcame my Mage in both HP and DD. However it was only just out pacing me.

My assumption is that since the familiar will grow at the same rate regardless of how many minions you have, Jon has made it so it grows half way between a minion from a 2 minion team and a minion from a 3 minion team. This in all honesty sounds fair. If your minions are out pacing your familiar, then it's suppose to be that way since you most likely have a small 1 or 2 minion team. In either case the amount of PR that a familiar adds is less then that of a DD mage of exactly the same stats, so I don't see where their is room for any complaint.

Before I see any more "Yay for DM nerf!" posts I would like to put forward that is is far more of an AS nerf than a DM nerf.
Sure the penalty is given after DM which helps very minorly, then on the other hand penalty for anyone with familiar tattoo will be higher.
I see this one as more of a general crowd pleaser for a lot of people as it still pretty much balances to what is was before, except for non-familiar tattoo wearers gaining a small boost when using AS.

Well it effects me, but then again so what.It's a fair change and was needed.

My AS is 602,657/510,727 (289,285)

With the nerf I am getting about 220K hit points out of my casting with no DM interference. I have 3 minions and a familiar. Was my previous affect being calculated for 3 minions, while my current affect is being calculated for 4 minions? Is that why I had a big drop? I thought Jon said that it would not affect 3 minion teams but I might be mistaken. I wish I could compare to the pre change numbers but I don't have any handy.

yeah, before it was a penalty for 3 minions, now its a penalty for 4 in your case

"I thought Jon said that it would not affect 3 minion teams but I might be mistaken."

where on earth do people get this stuff?

Would it be possible to show it on the main screen including the spawned familiar so people can see the effect for themselves? You'd have to validate the type of tattoo before rendering the display, but at least people could unequip the tattoo and seee the effect (or hire/fire).

Speaking of which, can we have an option to recoup part of our money when firing a minion? It's relevant in this case because people might not want the extra AS penalty, but don't want to test the change by hiring since the money is down the tube. Give us 80% of the cost of hiring that XP minion back. So it costs 20% of XP costs to test it out (similar to the costs of the tattoo artist to change the tat twice - once to test and once to change back - as it would cost 10% of tattoo NW).

"I thought Jon said that it would not affect 3 minion teams but I might be mistaken."

"where on earth do people get this stuff? "

Its just me being very confused :)

I wish Shade was around to collect the data and to tell us the real effect rather then reading most of these conjectures.

I think Myonax's point is that familiars cannot be augmented by items so if we compare a FF to a FB mage the latter gets better with the addition of CoI, MCM etc. Now that NW=PR things are maybe not quite so clear but you get the idea.

I agree with his point that longterm the Tattoos which augment minions may be better but this change looks sensible to me.

It definitely is a sensible change, and I have the most to lose by it with the highest AS in the game and a IF. I still have a decent fight list, though I can no longer win the high end opponents I used to. I still have folks above me in power level on my list and am on lists of folks with lower power level.

But I also agree that this only makes the FF even better in comparison with the IF as the poor IF really requires an AS to survive the ranged round. Even with highest AS in the game, the seeker arrows often tear him to pieces, and the high end fireballs can reduce him to cinders before he gets a shot off. Though the FF would be a better choice, I am stubbornly clinging to my IF and refuse to change!

I can perfectly understand this change, don't get me wrong on this.
But aren't we slowly moving towards a fifth minion? Instead of tattoos?

No we are not moving to a 5th minion, as some of us use TOA and TOE's which are not effected by this at all.

I meant the familiars, sorry. I know ToA's en ToE's work differently, but every familiar is being treated as a fifth minion in almost every way. Makes sense, I must admit. But it seems to be a bit of a strange way of restricting fifth minions to DD-casters.
Ah well, it works fine though!

ToJ - Fifth minion, not a DD-Caster. Right now 5th minions aren't restricted to DD-Casters anyway.

....so....how many minions do i need to have to have the least penalties to my AS? like what would be the ideal?

I think the point is that any team over 1 minion w/o a familiar is good. If you have a 100k AS then what happens now is a DM at 50k will first lower the AS by 40k (DM has a 80% effective level) leaving you with a 60k AS. Then the penalty comes into play for dividing AS among multiple minions, let's assume in this case the penalty is 20%, so your AS now grants HP to each minion as if it were a 48k AS. Before what would happen is you would lose the 20% first and then lose the flat 40k from DM, this would come out to a 40k AS per minion.

If you want to maximize the benefits of the AS, as in get the most HP out of it, then you just get the most minions you can get plus a familiar, which is no different then before mind you.

it does not show the weakening of the AS until after the battle has begun, should it be this way?

You do realize that question is answered in the original post, right?

...

sorry....

just to clarify:

ToAs, ToEs and Runes arent susceptible to the penalties enclosed here right: ?

" penalty for 5 minions is now 5% more than the penalty for 4 minions (formerly none); in other words, if you had 4 minions and a familiar before and AS effective level was N, now it is 0.95 N. "

ToAs, ToEs and Runes don't act as an extra minion, so I'd think the answer would be no.