how can mages be overpowered... this might be so o o o two weeks ago... but honestly.. HOW?

ToA....pfft do i need to say more?
oh... and all the equipment tanks get..
what do mages have? CoI and AG... woopty doo /sarcasm

... o.o .....

hehe

Tanks and all their NW and no XP!

I love how you used facts, comparisons backed by numbers, and other data that support your conclusion. /sarcasm

you want facts?!

YOU WANT FACTS?! !

YOU WANT FACTS?! ! !

I'LL GIVE YOU FACTS! ! !

when i get them

This is amazing. Already several posts here, and not one person has made the usual argument of, "But most of the top 10 aren't mages!" But I know some idiot will. So here's my response to that, in advance.

1) The top 10 are there because they fight the most, work the hardest, have the best strategies, and can afford to be there.
2) Massive amounts of NW, along with being able to buy BA all the time, do wonders.
3) The top 10 aren't every player. They're the (CB2) rich and ultra-dedicated player.


So yeah, I really hate that argument. But on another note, I do believe mages are overpowered. I'm not even sure if your post was for real, or a joke, but here's my responses to that anyway:

1) Mages can easily be seen as overpowered. The two dominant forces that build a team, at least in my opinion, are MPR and NW. Have both and you'll do great. Mages can focus on only the MPR and do fantastic. Their damage is free, and very devestating. All of the funds they make are available to go straight into BA, and perhaps what little equipment they might need, IE: large tatoo, AG, Corn, whatever.
2) Tanks have to choose. Without an external source of revenue, we often have to choose if we want the great MPR or the great NW. Plus you have a much larger startup cost with a tank, since you need two weapons, a tatoo, and all sorts of armor.
3) Mages can attack entire teams at once- tanks go one minion after another. Yeah, it's a small thing. But it still bugs me that my tank can only hunt down one enemy at a time while the enemy FB or CoC mages can blast aways teams all at once. Or they can go Decay or MM and concentrate on taking one down at a time. They have choices in how to spread their damage, while tanks can only choose in what order. And if we do choose mages first- that costs a great deal to maintain.
4) You say ToA is part of what makes tanks great. Ehh? First, you didn't even present a real argument. Second, ToA's are great. They mean the tank can't have a mage shield, can't have heavy armor, and they are very wide open to attack. And if you take the ToA off a tank and have him face a mage- he'll probably do better if you give him decent armor anyways. ToA's have little to do with mages- they are an anti-tank weapon. Sure they can concentrate on more HP, but it goes pretty fast with no armor.
5) All the equipment tanks get? This is not advantage tank. On mage vs tank, having extra tank equipment often means squat. The only tank armor that increases damage is BG, and most players hate those for some reason. Mages have multiple items to make them more deadly. And again, if a tank goes ToA, which you say makes tanks too strong, they are wide open to attack. Mage armor, while it lacks in number, makes up in strength. They help you kill faster and win more, plain and simple. Tank armor, for the most part, either helps against other tanks or reduces damage- neither of which will win a fight alone.
6) Tank teams require AMF. Let's face it, that's the only way most survive, unless they utilize a large wall or two. Especially with ToA, they take lots of damage, and the only way to reduce magic damage when you have a ToA is to spread it out (with walls), and use AMF. This single spell is the only reason most tanks have a fighting chance. Heck, even non-ToA tanks have a hard time with mages because of how powerful DD spells are. But mage teams can skip AMF and go for DM. They can do this because they have FB to kill everything on the other team in practically no time if they can stop the AS. But a tank can't consider DM because they still have to pick enemies off one at a time. So advantage mage, again.
7) Mages have focus. They can have their DD spell, HP, perhaps either DM or AMF, a tatoo, and be ready to go. But tanks need HP, ST, DX, an ability, AMF, a tatoo, and all sorts of stat hurting armor. So tanks are easily falling behind on stats- it's very difficult for them to have anywhere near the HP of a mage at similar MPR.


That's all for now. Hope I didn't bore and I hope that made sense. In conclusion- I do say mages are overpowered. And no, I'm not nuts as you assert in your post. On another note, I am a fan of the president. He's doing the best he can despite the numerous problems we have faced. But I'm not going to expect you, 'down with bush,' to show any logic on that issue either. Good night.

down with bush, if you are so sure that mages are underpowered then come with good arguments instead of being so childish to make such pretty posts that add absolutely nothing to what you stand for.

Tanks have one big advantage over mages. Most of their PR - ie NW, is offensive and useful against all teams, all strats. Mages obviously can do damage against everyone but against their damage there is the ToE, AMF, mage shields. Not to mention the friendly fire that FB mage teams have to deal with. And, bonus giving items aside, most of the ways to increase mage teams' PR are defensive.

There is only one counter to NW and that is NW. Even massive AC doesn't count for much against a tank hitting for 300k damage per hit with triple strikes....

What I think is out of kilter, is the power different tattoos give teams.

My ToE is around 520k lvl. It allows me to fight within at least the top 50 characters at all times. I have at times cracked the top ten. But a ToA of similar size is likely to only allow you fight at highest about 100k or more lower in score. A RoS of the same size with the appropriate strat will probably place you even lower. And as for the ToBF, well lets not go there....

The reasons for this? A ToE works right out of the box. Slap it on a mage and you're good to go. The others require a bit more thinking. The ToA needs NW obviously in the shape of weapons. The RoS, although very powerful in blocking DM, is only an aid, more like the tattoo equivalent of a Corn than anything else and then require a decent strat behind it. I'm not going to qualify the ToBF - I would so much like to, the idea is sound but a large ToBF on my team now would drop my score like nobody's business. It almost adds nothing to you.

The familiar tattoos are all useful but again to compete at equivalent score levels I would need one of at least another 100k in lvl.

This is only opinion, but you just need to look at the top tattoos and their sizes and then check the placings of those players using them to see this.

And yes, I have checked this out in great detail. My tattoo would be a lot bigger if it wasn't for several visits to the artist over the months.....;)

I believe if you take 2 teams, one mage and one tank with the same amount of nw. The mage team should be more powerful most of the time. The only reason why the top teams are mostly tanks is because of the huge difference in nw. This is the main factor that mages are not ruling just yet.

Just another Tank vs. Mage discussion :/

Mage equipment is very limited, more expensive to buy, and even more limited possible to upgrade. A complete tank set including weapons was never cheaper before. With NCB & NUB you can gain XP & Cash very fast.

You dont even need a tank with two weapons and 400 ac. They work well with less NW.

Tanks can hit multiple times, so not a real disadvantage vs. DD. Ranged weapons fire before most DD spells are even casted.

Mage shields can block easily up to 50% DD. Combine that with a good set of armor, which a mage cant use. Take a look at all the nice side effects rare weapons provide.

All the other arguments Vaynard mentioned are quit weak. Just a matter of the right strategy. Check the wiki ;-)

Maynard,
Sure DD's can hit an entire team, and Tanks have to focus on one minion at a time, but they can get more than one hit in on that minion. So your argument there is moot. While a Mage can only fire off once per round and FB has backlash, meaning that the mage damages his own team, if he has a GA, he'll probably kill himself or his FF (I know, I've killed my own team plenty of times). If they use CoC, you get free hits in Ranged until they can get to Meleem so a good tank should be able to wipe out most everyone in ranged, leaving the mage alone to fight in melee.
I don't know why people are so down on the RoS, it gives you more strat options than any other tattoo. The protection from other people's DM is priceless. I don't have to overspend XP on my E spells just to keep them from getting fizzled (IE GA) so that free's up my XP for more useful Enchantments such as AMF, AS.
The RoS works best on a 3-4 minion team, if you have less, then you are better off with a ToE.

Yeah, I'm definitely with Poison on this one. There are any number of strats that can counter mages. My own strat is built around several of the counters that exist and takes advantage of some of the weaknesses in mage strats especially the FB/DM strat.

But I've yet to see a definitive anti- tank strat, unless you count the one that rare one that SacredPeanut did - three EC enchanters and one single tank at the back. But that one was incredibly weak against mages. And included a tank in it's line up. Brock Samson was good agains't tanks for a while too, but again that was a tank strat, albeit UC.

Most mage teams lose against tank teams, unless you have an absolutely huge single mage and even then massive AMF, mage shields and they're dead in the water...

In the end you need the offensive NW...

First off, Poison, it is not Vaynard's argument that is "weak", it is your counter to them. If you look at Vaynard's post whether you agree with them or not, it is well thought out and backed up with ideas to support his statements. Your counter is "All the other arguments Vaynard mentioned are quit weak. Just a matter of the right strategy. Check the wiki ;-)" that is weak. You may agree or disagree, but anyone who is convinced your counter is correct by that one sentence is the weak party here. So before you simply state things as fact without text to back it up, perhaps you should rephrase your one little entry into something like, "All the other arguments Vaynard mentioned I disagree with. Just a matter of the right strategy. Check the wiki ;-)" because to me your other sentence is not only weak, but insulting.

Back to topic, the only players able to ignore the NW to PR link are top 10 players, so toss them out of your equation. They are special cases. Now look at mages of equal PR below the top 10. They are boring sure, because you can only do so much with them, but they are overpowered. They are able to do damage simply based upon their MPR. A tank cannot. A tank need equipment, and mage does not. That right there says it all, it stems all the other arguements. The mage can then use profit to buy BA, and tank must do both adding NW very carefully and buy BA. A mage can effect one minion or multiple minions with varying degrees of damage, and tanks while able to strike multiple times, only damages a single minion. Does not help much to hit a single minion 3 times when the first time killed him. A fireball gets more effective as the number of targets decrease, a tanks attack does not.

The fact is this, how many anti-tank strats are there out there? How many anti-mage strats are out there? Why do you think such a disparity exists? I have to train AMF equal to my HP just to hang with my own PR group in battle on my single tanks. Shoot my one mage team (ok its a FF team without a "mage") easily achieves 3x its PR to score ratio without me even playing it. I keep wanting to retire it, but then see how well its doing without me even fighting with it, I can't. My tanks always end up with less score than they had when I went to bed, and I fight them back up. My mage team seems to gain score without me even realizing it.

ALL of that said I still prefer tanks. Mages are boring. I have always preferred the underdogs anyway. Thus my adoption of the UC/ToBF/Exbow strat. Go underdogs! Go Tanks! But mages are overpowered when you consider equal PR and not within the confines of the top 10 NW to PR exemption.

Mages are good, dependable, but severly MPR-constrained in the growth. Choose a mage if you want to make a guy who will climb dependably.

Tanks are dependant on NW investments, but are able to break the MPR-constraint by dumping more NW in to leverage their ToA.

ToA is the only tattoo that lets you leverage NW effectively.

That said, playing a mage was fun :) I'll be interested to see what Chappy does after dropping a tank-type in front of it.

I'm just thinking of what will be the scenario in the future, maybe 1 year later. Will tanks fall behind mages because of the inability to keep up with adding nw in order to match the mages? Or will the mages get nerfed more so that tanks can keep up?

LOL I just want to say... hybrid like mine... stinks.

i hope the mages don't get nerfed, it cost me a fortune (over 20mil) to get all the equipment i have, and it has yet to be upgraded. and, my mpr was jut cut in half by some system bug. so my 6 million dollar tattoo is relatively worthless now, as my max tatto was cut in half as well. if anyone is wondering what i am talking about, goto stats -> graphs -> mine, and then type in 'talo' where is says add another player, and click submit. i saw this yesterday, and i almost quit cb2. the only reason i didn't was because i have debts to pay off, and i don't want to put others out. how can i possibly compete now that FB took a 20% damage reduction, my nub was just cut in half, and, to top it off, my mpr was cut in half. my single mage team was never over powered, i have constantly been in debt trying to get the best tattoo and equipment to make me better than those tanks around me, and i fight all the time. i am on this game more than i do anything else (read my post in contests, cb addicts).

Interesting thing about CB.

A pretty much pointless comment, which perhaps 2 minutes of thought went into, causes massive, enlightened responses about 20 times as long as the original post.

Jonathan: "chosing to spend money on BA instead of items is a strategic choice"

...is the first important point I agree with.

Second thing is that Oduten and NWO are the only top 10 PR mage only teams. As I played to that position, I played versus tanks and mage teams and lost not more or less battles as pure tanks. In my range the mage is not very overpowered. I can win to only one char above my PR, none above my MPR, and maybe one or two above my score. So my opinion, mage is not overpowered, but an interesting strategic element.

Sefton. I won't discuss each of Vaynard points. But take for example 5) there are lots of quite cheap items that speed up your tank or make it stronger. HoE, TG, EC, EG, EB ... there is definitively a potential. My AGs will soon cost many millions to reach just 1% more damage, a weapon would probably cost much less(and later) to make it 10% stronger. Additional tanks do have the chance to reach up to 470 ac - my mage will probably never reach 250.

I think the arguments are weak because each one could be easily countered with something that is a good point to play at least one tank in your team. Don't like ToA? Use another tattoo and strategy. Only AMF helps? Use DM on a tank supporting enchanter and weaken the enchantments of the mage by yourself. Mage only trains HP and Fireball? Spend 6k xp for a minimum decay! Full team is attacked? Check out GA! Stat hurting armor? AC -or- Dex./Str. thats a feature :) Can hit only one target? Great to defeat 1 minion teams. 4 minion teams? If you only play a single tank... -_-

So tanks are not that weak, mages not _so_ overpowered/underpowered, best is like ever a good team mixture/strategy :)

If you compare mages vs. tanks with equal NW, mages will win in almost all cases. So, the argument that tanks hit multiple times a round and yada yada doesn't really hold up. Tanks have to spread their exp much more thin than mages. To play a viable tank strategy you MUST have a fairly high to ridiculously high NW to compete. The top players are Tanks mostly because they have been playing for so long and their NW reflects their CB2 and USD use. I play the tank route mainly because I like to upgrade my items and hit harder vs getting it by default with DD spells. Also, there are too many mages, I like to add a little variety. :)

What prompted this thread? There was a survey last week, all of these things were said there...

Posion I much prefer the latter post to the former one. Agree or disagree with you, now I could say why :) The other was simply non-productive.

I personally think the only reason to spend any great amount of cash on mage items is to stave off boredom. I mean that IS the mage advantage, if you choose not to leverage it, add items whose NW increases your PR, and spend gobs of money doing it, more power to you, but ask youself why you are doing it. This assumes you are not in or near the top 10 of course. At that point you are crazy not too, for that is the advantage of the top 10, and you should leverage it.

Everyone says you can add this to tank or add that to tank to make them better, but what they are not saying is your HAVE to add this or that, or you will fail. That is how tanks work. No weapon, no damage. No armor, fireballs eat you up. But every piece you add means you have to consider the increase in PR (and thus potential decrease in rewards) vs. the effect or abilty to beat new opponents. I think that is fun personally, but its a requirement none the less.

How about this....a tank of equal PR to a mage rents An Elven Long Bow [6x68] (+70) $9,592,845 $10,000 1 day, and a mage takes all their equipment off besides the tattoo. Who do you think is more likely to do better? The mage of course. To me thats the whole thing in a nutshell, a tank cannot actually do that much better with all this equipment everyone keeps pointing to that makes a tank "stronger". While a mage can in many cases become more powerful wearing nothing but a tattoo. So to me its a trade off between easy power and boredom. Shoot, me kill, me stab me in the back, BUT DO NOT BORE ME. So I choose the hard way. But that does not make the mage les powerful. They are over powered because they can do as much if not more damage as a tank with equal PR without any real effort.

Check out dirks and Sefton. Identical PR.

Sefton Lightfoot hit Ramia [1943]
Sefton Lightfoot shot Iakilu [2391]
Thats with an X15 +15 exbow

Sefton Lightfoot pulverized Sunoni [3292]
Thats with X17 +17 UC

Sunoni's Cone of cold hit Sefton Lightfoot [5601]
And thats after Sefton Lightfoot cast Antimagic Field on Sunoni (0.39)

I personally think that says it all. With little to no effort dirks wipes the floor with me, with identical PR, and all his NW tied up in his tattoo.

You might say thats because my strat sucks, perhaps that is so but lets see you do better with a tank at equal PR, then tell me it sucks.

Mages are over powered. But tanks are more fun. Go TANKS!

Tanks only need weapons.

If they are using a tattoo (which is, lets face it, going to be a ToA).

There's no real need to slap any armour on them after that. Just like a Mage.

You can add armour to both, but you don't really need to.

just had to add that tanks need DBs ... not some of them ... all of them

well the ones that want to stay alive anyway :)

Heavy MgS tank can fight above PR with no tat and as a single minion char...
but that doesn't make mages "not overpowered".

How about a combination mage skill and rather than chance to hit, a chance to miss with your spell when you are being attacked. Have a concentration skill to compensate.

I might have more in depth thoughts to add later but for now will just address Sefton's comparison. How you can answer this question with an example of a UC single tank with ToBF versus a 4 minion MM/CoC team confounds me, most would agree that UC is still underpowered and your tattoo is doing nothing for you in this case.

Rubberduck,

I can see how you would make that confusion, but Sefton, my NCB character has no tattoo. I make the comparison by saying adding minions adds PR. Should not equal PR mean that they are close to equal power? The UC is much more powerful than any weapon that could be added to my character that would not increase my PR. I have tested it. Basically speaking with virtually all the NW allowance dumped into the exbow, anything beyond slightly better than base BoNE adds PR.

I thought that was the whole idea of PR and the NW to PR link and the adding of the tattoo to PR, etc. To show equally powered opponents. Perhaps I am missing something there. In the case of dirks vs. Sefton, we have the same PR and yet I have to battle him three times in a row just to see what his CoC would do to me damage wise, because I do not make it to melee otherwise.

I would fire back, create and equip a tank any way you want (except you cannot use UC or exbow), make your PR equal to Sefton's PR and fight me. I will lay odds you lose. I do extremely well vs any tanks of equal and in many cases greater PR. And that includes having the same amount of exp trained into AMF as I have trained into HP, which is obviously useless against a single tank, meaning I waste about 1/4 of all my exp on a stat that does nothing to help me vs. tanks. You will change your opinion about the "underpowered" nature of UC at low levels very quickly.

So there you go. I own tanks of equal and often greater PR, but yet a mage of equal or less PR can own me even if I devote 1/4 of my trained exp to AMF which is specifically designed to counter mages.

Thus I say, mages are overpowered.

Ahh, sorry, I thought you were talking about the character that has been beating on me for some time :)

"So there you go. I own tanks of equal and often greater PR, but yet a mage of equal or less PR can own me even if I devote 1/4 of my trained exp to AMF which is specifically designed to counter mages."

:) It's true. Look at my NCB charcater. I've a score 3 times my PR (but what's score?) and I generally have a harder time facing FB/CoC Mages than tanks.

Sure this will change when I face the larger weapons, but by then I'll have had so much more MPR (to catch up to the NW increased PR of the tanks) to improve my DD.

AMF is a poor Mage counter. Just consider the numbers. At a little over 200K MPR, I've got around a DD of 275K. With an AMF equal that (and little else on your team...) you'll reduce my DD by 50%. But what else will you have? A very weak DD? A tiny tank?

MgS are far better for stopping Mages.

Don't get me started on BL. We might just as well double all physical damage and get rid of BL.

I think AMF is a great mage counter when combined with other factors - AS, MgS, or ToE. The reason is this - amf is calculated on raw damage before reduction by armor giving the possibility of doing more damage to the mage than they do to you even with a relatively small amf. Yes I agree single tanks have always been inferior to mages single or otherwise but I think this is perhaps necessary for overall balance. The question are mages overpowered is very difficult to answer given the complex variations of viable strategies right now. What I do believe is that a simple DD nerf would leave DD tattoos underpowered. Check out Black Rose for a deadly mage killing tank strategy.

How you like this "deadly Mage killing tank strategy "
Score / PR / MPR: 1,133,448 / 792,708 / 701,374
ROE-anywhere.
no Tattoo
It's mine btw,

I don't really think that one battle is so typical. I'd really try another strategy. But you're right in this special case your single UC/Enforcer tank is not the best way to win. But as you said you'd easily win versus other tanks. You lose this round of the "Scissors Paper Stone" game.

But is that still the case if Sefton wears a tattoo, shoots seekers with an elbow, using archery and got some AS powered enchanters in front of him? I'm not willing to test out all the possible combinations to find one with a tank ;-)

PR represents XP and NW but that does not mean you bought/upgraded the right things or trained the perfect strategy.

OK one battle not enough? I chose it simply because at the time we had identical PR (within 100 PR). Here is some data then. I reloaded my fight list with the 50 clan members close to my score.
Here is me: Sefton - Score / PR / MPR: 38,980 / 30,714 / 30,375

Here is the top 15:

dirks - Score / PR / MPR: 73,079 / 29,064 / 22,748 - E/E/M/SFM - LOSE
Epsilon Squadron - Score / PR / MPR: 45,282 / 31,972 / 31,972 - RoEM DRAW
Blaster - Score / PR / MPR: 42,512 / 21,523 / 21,009 - E/RoEM - WIN
hjhj - Score / PR / MPR: 41,184 / 23,694 / 20,862 - M - LOSE
Daniel - Score / PR / MPR: 40,465 / 17,653 / 11,722 - ToEM - WIN
Hunting P@rty - Score / PR / MPR: 40,379 / 20,964 / 13,182 - E/FFM/T - LOSE
Nosukova - Score / PR / MPR: 39,025 / 23,775 / 14,926 - T/T/IFM - DRAW
Bushwhacked - Score / PR / MPR: 38,947 / 37,419 / 23,426 - T/E/ToAT/E - LOSE
ElvenBlackMage - Score / PR / MPR: 38,082 / 23,778 / 23,778 - RoEM - LOSE
Simple Man - Score / PR / MPR: 35,885 / 24,199 / 20,412 - ToEM - LOSE
The Steel - Score / PR / MPR: 48,322 / 24,420 / 22,834 - FFM/M/T/T - WIN
Beaner - Score / PR / MPR: 34,453 / 21,780 / 12,850 - ToEM/T - DRAW
Lu Bu forces - Score / PR / MPR: 32,055 / 21,932 / 21,932 - M - WIN
Smettoz - Score / PR / MPR: 30,773 / 17,583 / 13,540 - FFM - WIN
GEM couple - Score / PR / MPR: 33,146 / 21,965 / 13,811 ToAT/M - WIN

I want highlight a few of them:
hjhj - Score / PR / MPR: 41,184 / 23,694 / 20,862 - M - LOSE
ElvenBlackMage - Score / PR / MPR: 38,082 / 23,778 / 23,778 - RoEM - LOSE
Simple Man - Score / PR / MPR: 35,885 / 24,199 / 20,412 - ToEM - LOSE

Single minion mages, with 5K or more less PR. In two cases without a fight assisting tattoo. You say well tailor your strat to fight mages. Well, if you go archery with seekers you lose the UC and then you have to add weapons to the mix, PR goes up, so that falls apart. Sure I could train MORE AMF than I have HP (HP being equal to AMF in trained exp currently) but that simply means I have to do even more to beat tanks while wasting a greater portion of trained exp on non-tank beating spells. Please tell me to add minions, that just makes my point. I need multiple minions to beat a straight Fireball Mage with no tattoo = mages overpowered.

As you can see right now I have base Combat Gi (free X10 +10 weapon), +4 HG (the only thing adding PR) and x20 +15 exbow and all together it adds 399 total PR (compared to MPR). You can try to get a better combination of gear with less PR impact if you would like, good luck :) You add more gear or more powerful gear it just adds to PR and means that beating them gives poorer rewards and makes any losses more glaring.

The ElvenBlackMage is the most glaring loss. 23K PR/23K MPR and my 30K PR is toasted. The fight lasts two rounds, so with or without melee it matters not. You could go with archery and bow, but then you would have to do 5K a hit, hitting twice in each of the first two rounds just to draw. Good luck with that at 23K PR. If you can do that Poison, show me how! Especially difficult since archery needs to be 1/4 of ST score, whereas my UC is stat independent (meaning its score is not derrived from a fraction of a stat like archery or bloodlust)

I may or may not have upgraded the right things (but I challenge anyone to do better) and I know I do not have a perfect strat (I am not a single mage) but this example shows to me quite clearly mages are overpowered.

Your turn!

Who cares about mages, what about unarmed combat guys? Will they ever be as good as tanks?

Sefton, a single minion team shouldn't be able to beat a single minion FB team any more, that was a CB1 idea...and I still say you could have comparble (though lower due to the lack of any tat) results with an MgS and a Vorp (and possibly nothing else), especially if you equip decent heavy armor. Overtraining AMF and using a weak strat (single minion UC) doesn't prove mage overpowerment, just that rock still smashes scissors.

wait sec, first off, a single mage is supposed to beat a single tank? That is definately news to me. I missed that memo. We both (ElvenBlackMage and Sefton) do not use tattoos. He is more than 20% less PR than me, and he is supposed to win? Again I somehow missed that bulletin.

And again you add a MgS you add PR and make your point (if there is one moot). Granted you could use the weapon allowance to absorb the Vorp, but since you only last two rounds not sure how that helps you but good luck with that. You need the MgS to add less than 500 total PR to your MPR to even pretend to be "comparable" to Sefton and yet you plan to do more than AMF....I need some of whatever it is you have ingested. Again decent heavy armor? The last time I checked on the + on armor stopped magic, and it is that very + that adds to PR. Again, HUH?

Lastly, bring on your single tank, with the same PR and fight Sefton. With your MgS, and your "decent" heavy armor, and no ranged, and your big weapon allowance absorbed Vorp. Shoot with that idiotic strat, go ahead and double my PR. I mean my AC is like 10 (which is about the same AC as most small PR mages, again Huh?) your vorp will be quite useful Im certain. Once I wipe the floor with him, tell me again how "weak" my strat is. Once my scissors obliterates your rock, perhaps you will think a little more about posting such drivel.

Sefton, If you drop the Exbow (which does nothing versus Mages anyway) and exchange UC for BL + A nice melee weapon (the same size as your EXbow) I'm sure you'll do better.

Well, versus CoC anyway! ;)

UC is just too underpowered.

Using any NW allowance on a ranged weapon is not as effective as using it melee weapon + BL.

Drop AMF and use a MgS + Morg/Bth will probably do better versus all mages than AMF + UC.

Also, those are _tiny_ PR levels. Can we at least have an "average" level compared in this manner? Like 100K MPR? Any single tanks around my MPR (270Kish) that want to dance? Let us know the results! *smile*

Well you maybe misunderstood me. A strategy purely based on mages is very good especially at the beginning. But in the long run they may have more problems to keep up with tank/mixed teams. And yes tanks are more interesting ;-)

To tell the truth I'm to lazy to develop a strategy that could work better for you within your rules.

I agree Sefton Lightfoot is a loser(and not in particular versus mages). Hire 3 more minions, one with MM and Haste, one with AS, one with AMF or DM and GA, put all your stuff to rentals, buy some other decent equipment you can afford, untrain UC, instead train 10-30% HP, 20-40% STR, 30-70% DEX. And a supporting skill/enchantment for your weapon(s). Try again, maybe that works a bit better - or its crap and we find something other for you ;-)

Lets finish this. I know what you mean.

OK in order:

GL - Its a single mage. There is one minion. Any ranged weapon hit the same. Yes I could do a little more damage with a Hxbow or a elbow, but the single mage KILLS YOU BEFORE melee. Why is this a UC issue when you do not make it to melee. How oh how oh HOW do you plan to add a MgS to a character adding little to no PR and do better than AMF? Yeah sure a 1mil NW MgS would be more effective than a 14K AMF but then the PR gain would be so massive, it makes the point moot. You seem to add gear like it does not link to PR. Yes if it did not we would not be having this discussion, but it does so we are. It the case of ElvenBlackMage and Sefton, we each have no tattoos, we each have MPR and PR so close (or exactly equal) that they are effectively the same, and yet with more than 20% PR less the mage wins.

Sut - why does the PR level matter? Should it not be equal across all PR level regardless of level? I mean the only difference would be the amount of weapon allowance and the amount of DD trained. This is again assuming like the single FB mage without a tattoo, the tank adds no significant PR to his MPR via gear.

Poison - I did understand you, it just didn't make sense. Again you are saying add minions. If that is the only solution to battling single minion FF mages without a tattoo I rest my case. I do not have nor claim to have the ultimate strat, I simply claim mages are over powered. You are welcome to suggest fixes to a SINGLE minion tank without a tattoo that can fight and beat a SINGLE minion Mage without a tattoo of equal or greater PR. That I do need, the rest is just an exercise of your typing skills.

My claim is mages are over powered, not that Sefton, or Silent Monk, or Djinni or Gyaxx (now Freed) are the greatest characters ever made. It is a decent tactic to try and deflect an argument by making points in off topic areas in hopes to steer the argument that way, but it is usually left to those that do not have an argument on topic.

"GL - Its a single mage. There is one minion. Any ranged weapon hit the same. Yes I could do a little more damage with a Hxbow or a elbow, but the single mage KILLS YOU BEFORE melee."

Are we talking specific characters here? CoC can't kill you before melee, which was the first DD you showed a fight against. You could make the case that physical ranged is too weak to kill mages before melee. But you will do more damage with a melee weapon + BL then a missile weapon of same NW.

"Why is this a UC issue when you do not make it to melee."

UC doesn't help a jot versus FB or MM. Is the problem that Mages do too much damage in the ranged rounds?

"How oh how oh HOW do you plan to add a MgS to a character adding little to no PR and do better than AMF? Yeah sure a 1mil NW MgS would be more effective than a 14K AMF but then the PR gain would be so massive, it makes the point moot. You seem to add gear like it does not link to PR. Yes if it did not we would not be having this discussion, but it does so we are."

Because the MPR spent on AMF can be re pent somehwere else, making you a better fighter at the level your MgS NW now puts you at. Bump your Str of Dex with it. None of the benefits of UC (well, the evasion, which is all it really has, which doesn't stack with a pair of DBs, the evasion from a ToBF and possibly even the bonus evasion from a Gi) help at all versus mages. It does very weak physical damage. I'm sure even a small weapon + BL would do better.

As for the Gi, using a base for the extra 10 to X and + is a great idea, but is outpaced by weapons very quickly. The same way a low AMF is great at small PRs but is very quickly outpaced. MgS is never outpaced. It's better than AMF hands down. I'd take the PR hit for one if I could use it on my mage.

"It the case of ElvenBlackMage and Sefton, we each have no tattoos, we each have MPR and PR so close (or exactly equal) that they are effectively the same, and yet with more than 20% PR less the mage wins."

UC is underpowered. If you last to melee, UC doesn't help. That's why it's a UC issue.

If you don't last to melee, then the only problem here is that ranged weapons within the NW allowance can't out damage two DD spells.

Maybe that's not so great a problem?

Personally, I'd like FB's ranged penalty increased. Anything that get's to go first shouldn't be able to do the most damage. But MM is probably fine as it is.

I would like to add my little 2 cents, especially about the game in general and also some points, although I will not make conclusions, since I don't have the data to make the conclusion, nor am I able to test anything.

First of all the CB2 differs much from CB1. DM and tattoos really made CB2 a rock-scissors-paper game.
I can think of possible successful Mage anti-Tank strategy, but this will be crushed by most of other pure mages (providing that we are comparing characters with similar PR +/- 5%).
Also I can have Mage anti-Mage strategy, but this will not stand much chance against most of the Tanks.
In CB2 there are many anti-Tank, anti-Mage, anti-whatever things, but the problem is that you can't put them all on one character. You are only able to put some of them, thus there will be characters that will beat you.

Also, comparing if Mages/Tanks are overpowered or not, should be done in the range where the strategies are really mature.
And that range is from 500k - 1 mil PR.
Anything higher is a special case and the same is true for most things below that range.

And Mages have advantage in 1 - 200k PR range, there is no doubt in that. This I would like to support with some facts. Take the most common mage using ToE or LToE and assume some HP learned (otherwise DM could do the trick). the only weapon which can cut through this is Vorpal and a decent Vorpal itself adds at least 60k PR. Now just add 60k MPR to the mage (or less because Mage has ToE) and you see that Mage is better in 1 - 200k PR range than Tank.

My last observation. NW and tattoo on Krang adds 174% PR compared to his MPR. NWOs NW and tattoo adds on 30% PR.
Imagine NWO on the same PR as Krang while adding proportionally 30% PR to NWOs MPR... He would have 1750k MPR which is 87% more than now (close to double). And now compare Krang and NWO. Since we are not able to test it we don't know who would win.

Long post, I am off to bed.

Edit: "then the only problem here is that ranged weapons within the NW allowance can't out damage two DD spells."

To;

then the only problem here is that ranged weapons within the NW allowance, at your MPR, can't out damage two DD spells.

It seems to really be a case of at tiny levels, DD s do great easy damage. the higher you go, the smaller the gap is. Until spending totally out paces DD.

I still claim in time spening will stop and DD will then take back over again. But until the game lasts long enough, I'll never get the chance to proove it.

Are mages overpowered because they dominate the small PRs? If they dominated every level of play then yes. But back on CB1 the information I was always given was 'Tank until at least 500K. Magic just isn't worth it till then." Does that mean CB1 tanks are overpowered because they dominated the lower PRs?

At equal PR and NW, a mage will beat a tank providing their NW's are relatively low.

At equal PR and NW, a tank will beat a mage providing their NW's are relatively high, (a massive CoI and AG's are not going to help a mage as much as a massive weapon will help a tank).

Therefore someone who sells CB2 for USD will want to build a mage and someone who buys CB2 for USD will want to build a tank.

The challenge is to balance the game so that a tank who neither buys nor sells CB2 will be able to compete with a mage who neither buys nor sells CB2.

Oduten: Score / PR / MPR: 1,646,384 / 1,178,414 / 810,786

ILoveHelloKitty: Score / PR / MPR: 1,627,529 / 1,385,606 / 1,016,280

Oduten is a mage based team, ILoveHelloKitty is a tank based team. Neither has bought or spent USD (as far as I know).

Both have similar scores but Oduten has the lower PR, there's not a huge difference but it does seem that with no USD involved a mage does have a slight advantage over a tank.

GL - Yes you are correct my first example was CoC, but everyone got so hung up on the number of minions (or so it seemed) when in my opinion the number of minions is accounted for in PR. Then they said one example was not enough, so I gave many examples, and focused in on the one I felt most relevant, in a comparable way. Comparable in that there was only one minion each, both without tattoos, and the one with the less PR was able to win in two rounds. I felt that in order to make my case I had to remove as many variables that could be pointed to without truly addressing the issue. The issue being mages are over powered. So I took a single mage without a tat, ElvenBlackMage, with less PR as the easiest method to cut out the non essential vairables, and get to the heart of the matter.

IYou say add a MgS and drop AMF and spend that exp elsewhere. Lets say that my PR is X. And if I retrain it so there is no AMF (and lets forget the minor retraining loss for the sake of discussion only) and put it is all into ST, my PR is once again X. If I then add a MgS that would aproximate the AMF I untrained and the PR that NW would add was Y value, now my PR is X + Y. But I do not want X + Y, I want X. So in order to keep the PR constant, I would have to drop AMF and leave that exp untrained. Then add a MgS such that its NW to PR link would once again reach value X, I do not believe the value of the damage reduction from the MgS would equal the value of the AMF damage reduction.

Why do all these gyrations? Because the target, a single mage without a tattoo has MPR=PR, so as a tank to compare apples to apples, I have to do the same, I have to keep PR and MPR essentially equal. Granted, there is no difference if by comparison, if I have less MPR and more PR, IF my PR and the target PR ratio do not change. Thus all the gyrations. But I cannot make a fair comparison if I suddenly change our PR ratio and say AHA! see mages are not over powered.

You say just add BL and a morg. So I say, that in order to compete with a gearless tattooless mage I have to spend what even in current economy, 1mil for a base Morg, then forge or BS it up to some level at some expense, to compete? I think you make may case again, mages are over powered.

Even if I say man, you are right, I have to drop UC to compete, you are then saying I have to spend a lot of CB2 $ to do what a mage can do with trained exp, and I say mages are over powered.

Someone said train archery with seekers. I played the seeker game with Gyaxx, it is costly. When I was camping I didn't care it was costly, it was a pittance, now there is no camping, so cost once again becomes a factor. So I have to not only spend my exp in three places (HP, ST, and DX) compared to just two for the single mage (HP, DD), but also spend well the single gearless mage has no expense and zero is not a kind number math wise, but lets just say a WHOLE lot more than him (say 100K for base MgS, 1mil for a base Morg, and say nothing for ranged because I want it all in melee) and I say mages are over powered.

Again, I welcome the strat critiques and discussions from you GL (I deleted 4 paragraphs from this post about my strat, UC and MgS vs AMF), I respect your strat opinion, but it does not get to the heart of the matter that mages are over powered.

Sefton, yes. Perfect balance would mean perfect across all levels. But the game isn't perfect. If later (like high levels) I picked out a ToA user and cried "imbalance!" you would call me out it the same way.

The game is in the tough part of imbalance: top to bottom...not side to side. 30K PR is laughable. With the NCB/NUB, GL reached that in, what, 3 days?

I'm just asking for a more common data point is all. No hidden agenda, I promise you. *big wanting-to-do-lunch-with-you-at-Chevy's-grin*

The fact of the matter is that a good mage will beat a good tank. - Assuming neither spend USD. Of course spending USD will make the tank win, but there are a lot of CBers who don't spend USD and should still be able to run a tank if they choose.

I'm not even going to go into depth as to why a mage is much better than a tank, plenty of people have already made a good argument to that point and I don't think any more needs to be said about that.

What I am going to suggest though to balance things out is extremely simple.

Remove ToA.

Yes, get rid of the darn thing.
It'll even things up a lot.
It'll also make it possible to run a low NW tank again. - One that depends on strategy as opposed to determining the winner of fights by who spent the most USD.
ToA does nothing for tanks but penalise them. Worst of all is that they can't get away from it unless it's removed.
It does almost nothing to help against mages. (I'm sure it was Sutekh who posted a thread in CB1 about how ST is weighted to the low end, I followed this up by doubling my ST from 100k to 200k and saw no noticable difference. DX also does nothing against mages).
However when you're up against a tank with a ToA, you need a ToA yourself or you're doomed to fail.
By removing the ToA, you free tanks up. You eliminate the need for high NW (although that still helps a lot, it will be very much possible to run a low NW tank).

Remove the ToA and the game will be much more balanced.

except for the fact the top 10 would be on it's head...

Alright, here's my little example as to why I think FB mages are overpowered. In battles with Flip, owned by Bootsanator, my single tank Stalker does poorly. Here's the backstory:


My guy: --- Stalker --- Single ToE tank. ToE is level 631k. 500k HP, 375k Strength, 550k DX, 400k AMF, 100k VA, and 35 AC. Equipped with 4x44+70 AXBow, 92x80+58 BoNE, DB, EG, HoE, and 10x3+3 bolts.
Total NW: $37,154,477
My guy's Score/PR/MPR: 1,088,000 / 844,469 / 622,182

--------------- VS ------------------
My enemy: --- Flip --- EM with FF. Enchanter has nothing trained at all, only equipped with the FF: Smaug 'Dragon of Erebor' lvl 601,020. Mage has 250k HP, 13th largest FB in the game, and DM.
Total NW: $15,671,918
FB mage has MCM, CoI, AG, and a couple of leather items for 116 AC.
His Score / PR / MPR: 1,041,028 / 617,750 / 406,019


End results from a day of him farming me: Flip (Ghostbusters) Wins: 42, Losses: 3, Draws: 25. This is for a total win percentage of 60.00%. He wins in 3.3 rounds on average.

In a battle: I cast AMF at .36 and .31 on his FF and him, respectively. My VA fizzles. I shoot and damage for 4 / 4 / 28,334 average damage, two of which waste his nude enchanter. He hits a total of 6 / 89,326 average damage.


Here's a few of my favorite battle moments:

's familiar takes damage from his own Fireball (39826)!
's familiar's Fireball hit Shiraha [20745]
Andy, the Fiery Pineapple takes damage from his own Fireball (42729)!
Andy, the Fiery Pineapple's Fireball hit Shiraha [122802]

's familiar takes damage from his own Fireball (45516)!
's familiar's Fireball hit Shiraha [104520]
Andy, the Fiery Pineapple takes damage from his own Fireball (48834)!
Andy, the Fiery Pineapple's Fireball hit Shiraha [141551]

's familiar takes damage from his own Fireball (51205)!
's familiar's Fireball hit Shiraha [51548]
Andy, the Fiery Pineapple takes damage from his own Fireball (54938)!
Andy, the Fiery Pineapple's Fireball hit Shiraha [94791]
Andy, the Fiery Pineapple cries "Shakakaka!!!"
R.I.P. Shiraha R.I.P. 's familiar

-----------------------------------------
In conclusion: Yes, he doesn't beat me all the time. I still win a small bit, 3 out of 70. But look at this. He does it with 250k less HP, a tatoo 30k levels smaller, $21,482,559 less NW, 226,719 less PR, and 216,163 less MPR. But I think that given all that, I should at least be able to win a little more, considering everything. Anyone else think that is kind of silly?

If you ask me, FB damage is probably just fine. But it's the fact that it has an uber-focus built in that makes it too strong. You can wipe out weak minions in round 1, then pound the remaining enemies in each next round. Against one character, FB deals massive damage amounts. Absurd damage even. But that's just my opinion.

If you remove ToA, you would have to remove the NW/PR linkage, otherwise Tanks are well and truly screwed.

If you remove ToA, you are asking for more trouble, because you will be destroying the rock-scissors-paper balance in Tattoo choices for Tank teams.

Sef, I agree with a lot of what you have said, and really do think using the base Gi is a fabulous idea on a starting character. There are two points I'd like to highlight.

1) NW and PR.

"now my PR is X + Y. But I do not want X + Y, I want X."

That's being stuborn. Add the MgS, change your fightlist to those at X+Y you can now beat, ignore the old mages at X. Use the XP from AMF to help you kill at X+Y.

Another thing to consider is the small size of the NW allowance at small levels.

At the moment, you're finding it hard to out damage mages with a weapon/weapons that don't exceed your NW limit. (Also, both weapons you are using aren't the top of the line for damage, so you have to expect doing less damage than other tanks your size.) As you grow, even keeping your weapons inside the NW limit, will allow you to increase your damage in a non linear fashion. While the mage is limited to a standard linear increase.

There will come a size when your NW allowance is large enough that your weapons start out damaging mages without taking you over the limit.

It's just not now. :)

2) Spending cash.

"Even if I say man, you are right, I have to drop UC to compete, you are then saying I have to spend a lot of CB2 $ to do what a mage can do with trained exp, and I say mages are over powered."

Jon has already stated that's a trade off he likes. Tanks spend loads of cash on items. Mages get to spend loads of cash on BA.

I say that Tanks are overpowered due to multiple hits, which is only gained (bar the silly ToA) through cash on items. Something Mages can't do. Plus they have a skill that doubles all their damage. That's overpowered.

UC doesn't leverage either of those bonuses.

Mages don't need items to compete. Therefore they don't need to spend cash to compete. Tanks are the opposite.

I also agree Mages are boring.

I'm sure it's FB+DM that needs to be toned down. With CoC you get the option of trying to meet it head on in melee, or to try and take the mage down before it unleashes. MM is just meh anyway. It's FB that is the killer. You get two options facing it. Try to out damage it from round 1 (which with the archery reduction is a hard thing), or out last it (Which AMF on it's own can't do. You really need multiple minions + AS + MgS somewhere and maybe a ToE to outlast FB/CoC it gets harder when you face DM, as your AS goes and yoru multiple minions don't last long). A single minion cannot outlast a FB mage. It's just not possible.

That's the major problem you face with your single UC guy. You can't outlast FB/CoC, so you must out damage them. And an EXBow plus UC just won't do that.

UC needs to be buffed. No one whos used it hasn't given up in pure frustration. Everything does better than it.

Im sure everyone is tired of hearing from me, but I cannot stop so oh well. I will try to make this much more brief (good luck)

First off, on the UC front, please do not get me wrong I would love a UC buff, but I look at UC like I look at say the katana. At some point you have to upgrade to a better weapon than the katana, or you will not compete. So, I say the same about UC. At low levels it works great but at some point you have to upgrade your weapon to a more damaging variety. Granted, katanas do not have a whole class of items working to make it better like UC does, so maybe UC has higher expectations than a katana, but in the end, you either get a better weapon or get run over.

On the tank and spending cash front, I agree at the upper levels you need to spend money to make a tank work, and for mages you do not, but I think in this current form, it precludes tanks at any level without spending money and that is unrealistic at early levels. That is why down here everyone is a mage of some sort. I fight maybe 1 tank out for 20 opponents, the rest being some sort of mage or mage based familiar. In my opinion this makes mages the only realistic option early on, and I think just like Sut said about the ToA at high levels, this sort of "requirement" is bad for diversity and bad for CB.

This just popped into my head, it is not fleshed out but, what if you made FB or and DD spell damage somehow affected by the characters MPR. Just like all weapons are affected by ST and DX, you make DD spells in some similiar fashion affected by MPR. If you take an x100 +100 BoNE and drop it on a character with 10K ST and 10K DX it is very ineffective, when compared to the cost of the item. So a big DD spell on a low MPR character could be is some fashion similiarly affected.

I know everyone is going to say its already limited by the amount of exp you train into it, and at low levels you have less exp to spend, thus it is less effective, but you could add on this MPR based adjustment to counter the overwhelming advantage a mage has at the early levels. It is just a thought. Doing this would not require a blanket adjustment of DD damage. It would simply simulate the same restrictions an early tank has at spending cash. Heck you could even give a bonus to DD damage at high MPR levels. That might help the balance on the upper ends as well. Like early on MPR affects DD damage negatively, in the middle levels it affects equally, and at high levels it affects it positively. Again, just a thought.

P.S. Poison, since you are so helpful in trying to "fix" Sefton which I do not need, I will give you some advice I am sure you will say the same thing. On NWO you use DM and then two Im sure quite large MMs for your damage. Switching one of them to say FB or CoC will compliment your DM much better and allow you to achieve a much higher score, because your DM removes EDs on all opponent minions, but then you fight them one at a time like a tank.

Just out of this topic comments. This is funny how everyone got sucked into the debate while the thread starter is no where to be seen. But interesting reading.

Don't like FB because of its splash damage. Silly thing to help killing my own minions. CoC is ineffective until melee. Maybe I try CoC or a tank, later. Lets wait for Jonathans next tweaks/items/nerfs. ;-)

Just as a little aside: MM is the only DD spell (decay is an exception - it isn't really a DD spell in the same way as the others) that is actually quite effective against mage shields. That focused attack means that a MM mage can cut through the mage shield quite quickly, instead of diluting his attack across several minions at once. That same focus means that AMF is not as effective here either.

Poison's team is one of the few purely mage teams around me that I can't beat, and that's with a team that's been designed to take out mages....

Maybe just because I fought a few battles more :)

Maybe ;)

:) I agree with everything you posted Sef. Just mulling through your MPR idea.

If not a MPR amendment to DD spells, how about a mage skill?

Mages have no skills to train (Evasion doesn't count...). How abot reducing DD damage, but making a BL like Mage skill. But it's both very expesnive to originally learn and then to increase.

At low MPR, you won't have the xp to spend on it, and if you do, your DD level is lower, and at higher, it gives you a way to play with the big tanks.

plus giving mages something else to spend xp on helps to lower DD level, thus increasing the effect AMF has.

And AMF needs a boost.

Or maybe NWO has double the MPR as Jack Crow :) that's just a few more battles i think.

Sefton's MPR idea is interesting and would give those who think about such things a more interesting time of a mage team.

Physical damage is connected to ST/DX after all, so why shouldn't a mage have some extra element to tie his damage to?

Perhaps an extra stat such as Wisdom for a mage to show how much experience (in the real sense of the word rather than the CB sense) he has gained. If he isn't Wise enough his spell wouldn't be strong enough?

I still say all we need is a chance to miss when being attacked in melee, countered with a concentration skill, gives tanks some use for dex against mages (multipule hits giving multipule chances to miss, or missfire). Remove the ToA, and DB's, and we might have something. [NOTE: I am not actually in favor of doing this!]

*rubs his eyes* Okay, this is the third of these threads I've read over the last four hours and my brain hurts. Who cares if something is or isn't over powered. A decent strategy and knowing how to work things properly should, in a set area, allow you to beat anything that is overpowered.

And if the Powers That Be decide something is overpowered, they'll nerf it. And if they think it is too weak, they'll offer it something new.

So.... How about we just share the love and quit whining?

P.S. I'm using a Mage Team, nowhere near Top 10 of course, but yet even with getting my Tank gear, thank you OB and the gang, I can't tell a difference.

P.P.S. Someone care to point out something other than the Wiki to show me how these things make one team better than the other. Like a battle calculator.