What's a good VA level (now that we have DM) (in General)

So, it used to be that you should keep your VA at the same level as your MPB. But now we have to worry about DM.

Does anyone have an idea what level I should keep my VA when taking into consideration DM? 2x MPB? 3x? I'm talking about my ET(bl) character Skucum here

It may be an impossible question, but I really have no idea and would like some input.

That would depends a lot on whom you fight. You see the level of the DM cast against you, so by that, you should be able to titrate the level of VA you need.

Some characters have a large level of DM, others have lower levels, it just depends on whom you fight.

If your looking for an all purpose answer, which is more applicable to characters raising up through the ranks, I would say there are two versions of the strat. Either just enough to cover your damage and no more. The point here is to just not waste any xp trying to save yourself from DM. The other method is to go for a big VA, but this is only advised if well more then half your team is Tank damage. Anything in between and you would have to know who it is your up against and tweak as needed.

My tank does all the damage, but I don't want to put more in there than I really need to. The idea of simply just putting an equal share of xp in VA is pretty tempting. If for no other reason than it's easy to remember and calculate :-)

I guess I just want to be careful with my ratios. I suppose I could periodically record the DM level of everyone on my fightlist and get an average. But I'm not 100% sure I understand how X amount of DM is going to affect Y amount of VA.

I think I'll go with your suggestion Vestax and see how I do for a month or so.

Thanks for your answers guys

With how powerful GA has proven to be, I can see having a huge VA being quite useful.

are the effect per point ratios similar for the two spells?
GA is good to have at just over the level of damage you are recieving, is it the same with VA? (I don't use it)
or, have i been doing things wrong the whole time...?

I say keep it the same. VA doesn't take a lot of experience. If someone has DM it is pretty much gone anyway. I just thought of it as a benifit against non-DM characters.

With DD/physical dmg been raise from CB1 and the introduction of DM.VA have lost a lot of it lust.Dmg output in range is greater and the need for good melee combat as been reduce add DM and you can only use it vs a % of ppl.So if VA worth getting train is the real Q to start with.The Cb1 heavy tank strat is gone.Well not all are aware of it.

Train it to equal your MPB (or average damage... whatever you preffer).

I was to begin with going to suggest you train AMF and VA equally.
But really, by training them equally you're leaving yourself very weak.

There are a lot of common DM strategies that would drop your VA to O. Your best bet (well, not best, but if you want to stay with two minions) is to get a MH and train your VA to equal your average damage, MPB, whatever. This ensures that your losses are minimal against DM characters whereas there really is no logical way with two spells on your enchanter to get it past most characters that use DM. So at least minimize your losses against DM characters, and take full advantage of your VA against those who do not use DM.

My opinion would be to train it as if DM doesn't exist. Most of the DM users have it trained very high and if you try to counter you end up wasting xp that could be better used elsewhere. And if you are really concerned about DM just don't fight opponents who have it trained.

Trying to counter every strategy will drive you mad! Just ask GentlemanLoser if you don't believe me!

=)

Ideally, I would want my VA equal to my MPB, after DM impacts it. Since different people train DM to different levels there can't be an optimum ratio. I was hoping, however, to get some kind of rule of thumb.

(I suppose technically, the effect of DM on VA can be figured out experimentally, but I don't want to put in the scores of hours needed to figure it out.)

My impression (haven't reviewed the forum posts on this lately) of DM is that for every 1 XP spent on DM, it nullifies 1.5 or 2 XP spent on any other enchantment. That being the case, I'm not sure it's worth using. In one sense, VA, AS, and the others have become Double Chain Mail.
But so far, I'm too stubborn or stupid to give up on them. I still use AS, and I still use VA, (and my character doesn't seem to progress all that much :-) )

So maybe 2X MPB is where I should keep it. I think I'll give 1.25 or 1.5 MPB a try for a while and see how that goes. My MPB hasn't changed at all since I switched my ToJ for a ToA (now a RoE) so it's not like it's a moving target.

How many of you guys use VA on your main characters? How's that working out for you? What sort of ratio are you keeping?

I personally don't think VA is a wise choice to train. Sure, the leech it would give at optimal levels would be nice, but just about any DM would lower the effect to minimal, of any, effect. I'm almost certain that in order for it to almost always be ~100% effective would be to have a minion train just it and nothing else. If that is not a viable option for your strat, VA probably isn't either.

Just my 2-cents.

P.S.: AS is a viable option if trained solely on one minion. You can check out my character "Test Subject" and see how I've set up my EETM.