Fireball Power (in General)

Being somewhat intrigued by the debate raging over fireball's possiblly being overpowered, I did what any sane person would do: I untrained everything and put it into fireball, and then changed my ToE into a FF.

The intelligent among you will note that this gives me one heck of a first round attack, but (probably) nothing more after that.

The result: The strategy blows chunks. No, I mean, really blows chunks, mostly because even by investing every scrap of XP I can beg, borrow or steal, I still can't kill teams of similar power in one fight. I.e. investments in training AS and HP outpace fireball's ability to deal damage. Grant's score is in freefall.

Yes, I know this is unscientific, but doing it right would be no fun :)

Well obviously you'll lose! You have absolutely no HP. After the first round you'll die garuntee. There is no way you can kill a team in 1 round so it's pointless. Also, GA/AMF/any attacks will ruin your team.

Wow, talk about unscientific lol. I have a few problems with your analysis.

1. Fireball isn't overpowered by itself. You need HP, or else the smallest enemy AMF or attack will slaughter you. Train some HP- that way your problem of your team being ineffective after round 1 might go away.
2. FB is a spell, not a strategy. You're testing a very screwball version of a pretty powerful strategy, and using that to say fireball isn't overpowered. That's like tasting orange juice and drawing the conclusion that oranges are worthless. Though similar, these are different things.
3. Fireball may be overpowered- but team problems, like no HP, will kill you anyway. The argument on how powerful fireball is is pretty complex.

I could say more, but that's enough for now. Just to finally get on topic, yes, fireball is overpowered in my eyes. Sure, many people argue up and down about how it doesn't dominate the top. But that's ignoring what i think is fireball's biggest flaw- the fact it is conical like CoC. Sure, when its damage is divided by 4 or 5, fireball ain't so bad. But as is, fireball is easily capable of decimating teams with one or two minions.

Just for example, let's look at my single tank Stalker. He's alright. 4x40+40 AXBow does decent, good sword, large ToE, and 150k AMF. Even with 300k HP, most single mages or mage teams still destroy him by round 2 or 3. After all my damage reduction, that's still around 100k a large fireball deals him minimum. To me, that's just a little silly. But maybe that's just me. Maybe CB isn't meant to have single tanks anymore.

Maybe CB isn't meant to have single tanks anymore.

What I was thinking just a week ago.

vaynard...try testing a TBF when i had team 7, i always lost to diggles, because afer his amf, his TBF reduced my FB to nearly nothing. im guessing you are not getting hurt that bad by tanks, so try a TBF out, it nerfs FB pretty well if you ask me...at least it did when i went against one.

Why don't you test this with the other DD spells to get a comparison, then you'll realize that at least the FB mage and FF did damage before you died. A CoC mage w/ IF and a MM w/ SF would do far worse. Then again, that wouldn't really prove much without any real HP in any of the test cases no would it.

Should there even be an arguement here? Any team whatsoever without an HP trained will lose after 1 round. Given that 1 minion dies per round.

2. FB is a spell, not a strategy. You're testing a very screwball version of a pretty powerful strategy, and using that to say fireball isn't overpowered. That's like tasting orange juice and drawing the conclusion that oranges are worthless. Though similar, these are different things.


reply: large FF with a very low mpr team is a strat.The FF is the defence/offence.

:)

"I.e. investments in training AS and HP outpace fireball's ability to deal damage."

I was thinking about this. Two single minion teams, both with X xp worth of levels. The first one trains only HP, the Second only FB.

FB has an initial cost of 8 which yields a level of 25.

HP Starts off at a level 20, and costs 8xp to reach level 25. (21 cost 1, 22 costs 1, 23 costs 2, 24 costs 2 and 25 costs 2xp - total 8xp)

Both FB and HP have exactly the same cost to get to level 25. From their they have exactly the same upgrade cost.

Now, as FB damage is 1/2 it's level, point for point, xp trained into HP is twice as effective as that trained into FB.

So to equal out the investment, you're FB must fire twice, so you must live for two rounds. But this doesn't take the ranged penalty into account.

From the first round of ranged, your FB needs to fire three times to excede the xp investment otherwise put into HP.

This isn't taking into account increasing HP through AC, Endurance or Protection, or increasing FB through a CoI.

AS complicates the issue more, and to be honest, I don't know enough about AS to work it through...

As for having no HP on a FB mage, you will need to target teams without AMF or GA, and those without ranged wepons (all fire on the first round of ranged) in order to have a chance of winning. But you should draw quite a few fights! ;)

"As for having no HP on a FB mage, you will need to target teams without AMF or GA, and those without ranged weapons (all fire on the first round of ranged) in order to have a chance of winning. But you should draw quite a few fights! ;)"

Or die trying! :)

POLL: Let's just see how many people that excludes from his fight list GL. I'd hate to hijack his post but it would be completely topical. Just say "fightlist me" if you fall under the list of people Grant could fight and win against as according to GL. (I want you to IGNORE PR cause we're testing the strat, not the char.) If you have AMF, GA, or a first round attack however, you should instead say "not it" and briefly list the reason why. I'll see if I can go first as an example.

"not it" AMF & GA

Not it: multiple minions with more than base HP, ToE, AMF, GA.

Hold on a sec - the minion may have no HP but the familiar does, which means the possibility of lasting more than one round. Doesn't it?

Sorry I am looking at Grant's char correctly? A 20 HP minion with a FF attached?

:(

It... No GA, No ranged....


Yeah, but I think Grants FF is small.

You've AMF though so you'd stand a chance of surviving

LOL! Just caught that! Not it!!

I suppose it comes down to DM using CoC single mages without GA...

:/

no it! AMF, Round One Attack

grant with no HP of course you will loose. the problem is not FB its FF's. they gain 120% xp and the DD of all familiars should drop to 80%. the reason it does not work for you is simple. you need HP

fightlist my Valkyrie, CoC Mage w/ DM and no GA :)

I knew about the FF having HP, but I was just taking GL's words literally for the fun of a poll.

:P

Not very many at the moment...

Add DM and you can go for all the MM/CoC teams as AS/GA won't be a problem.

AMF will still kill you though...

The point I wanted to make was that investments in training AS and HP *don't* outpace FB s ability to deal damage.

For those of you telling me to train hitpoints to win, I have a response:

DUH.

Really intelligent people can infer Grant was a ToE/FB mage before this change from my comments. So yes, I can deduce that if I want to return my score to former levels that training HP would be a good thing. (And I only take advice from really intelligent people :) )

THAT'S NOT THE POINT. This was an excercise to see how powerful FB is, especially in light of "FB is the only means to kill an entire team in the first round, blah blah blah" comments.

This shows that fireball isn't viable as a means of killing teams in the first round (it takes 2 or 3 rounds to kill similar power teams--teams who aren't uniquely training hitpoints--even if you uniquely train FB and they're DM-based).

And yes, the FF trains hitpoints, which is actually how I do usually win--well, that and melee-based teams. From my standpoint, FF hitpoints are more a bug than a feature :)

And GentlemanLoser, great comments. You are right. The FF is slightly undersized (Minion has 180k FB, FF is ~60k level).

No Grant.

"especially in light of "FB is the only means to kill an entire team in the first round, blah blah blah" comments.

This shows that fireball isn't viable as a means of killing teams in the first round (it takes 2 or 3 rounds to kill similar power teams--teams who aren't uniquely training hitpoints--even if you uniquely train FB and they're DM-based)."

FB *IS* the only possible way of killing a 5 minion team in the first round. It's not easy, and DM is just about needed to do so, but it's the only possible way to do it.

As for FB not being viable as a means of killing teams in the first round, that is because of *your* set up, not FB. I had a single FB mage, fought opponents above me and killed some of those in 1 round. It is possible, and viable.

Just not how *you* have done it.

Opps! Sorry if that sounded a little abrasive... :(

No problem :)

And actually, without hitpoints DM + FB is weaker than FB for some reason (My guess would be because it only affects teams with AS). Go figure :)

fb is probably a bit over powerful but it worth both ways i have a fb mage and i do reasonable damage but if my opponent has GA and or AMF i get a high % returned so i dont think its unair having FF the way it is if people have a problem with FB they should change there char to DEAL WITH I!!!
:)