Interesting: FB trumps ELB badly (in General)

So as always, I was just fighting around. And then I see Reborn Again, owned by DrAcO5676. And it turns out he owns Judgement Day, the biggest ELB in the game, at Judgement Day [6x118] (+110) worth $63,627,612. And he has a large fire familiar on this ET team.

And guess what happens? Granted, I have a larger tank than him, but the ELB ends up going 1 / 3 / 86,092 while his fireball has the overall stats of 5 / 116,901. And this gets me thinking- let's check out a few of the other large ELB's and big fireballs out there.

Who better than Supernova of the team Cosmos to test the fireball out? His fireball is (1969217) in stats.

Shiraha cast Antimagic Field on SuperNova (0.18)
...
SuperNova takes damage from his own Fireball (78483)!
SuperNova's Fireball hit Shiraha [606048]

So that, combined with his FF, easily kills me round 1. Pretty impressive indeed. Now to recheck ELB, I'll take a potshot at Krang. He has the third largest ELB, with Cú-Dûr [6x114] (+113) worth $56,727,336. And he has seekers, so a little extra damage. And we fight!

Anubis shot Shiraha with Cú-Dûr [171309]
Anubis hit Shiraha with Cú-Dûr [155324]

Anubis hit Shiraha with Cú-Dûr [191366]
Anubis shot Shiraha with Cú-Dûr [144870]

And while this is a lot of damage, it's barely over 300k a round- less than half the amount Cosmos's Supernova deals per round, even after an AMF of .18. Maybe it's just me, but that seems outrageous. One of the top USD spenders in the game with over $375million NW deals my team HALF the damage per round with the 3rd best ELB in game than ONE minion (ignoring the extra couple hundred thousand damage from the FF) with negligible NW and a FB.

In conclusion: FB does trump ELB, or any other weapon for that matter. The first round damage I took from Cosmos wasn't even the full amount, since FB damage increases throughout ranged. I imagine that without AMF and if I made it to melee he'd be doing shots easily double that, around 1.2million damage.

And people say FB doesn't need a nerf of any sort. I laugh in your ignorant faces. I say you either a) are a FB user, or b)you live in a dreamworld. And I know people will say we have AMF, MgS, TSA, multiple minions to spread damage, RoBF, and AC all to help stop FB. This is true. But why else would we need a half dozen counters to one spell unless it was OVERPOWERED? I rest my case- for now.

Sorry, one final note: this will only get worse. People run out of CB2 cash, and USD is definitely not unlimited. But guess what? That FB will continue to grow indefinitely. I say game over CB! Supernova is on the way to being unbeatable. Maybe with even a small strat change and some added NW he could be right now.

Against Reborn gain:
Ranged: 6 / 6 / 158,682
Magic: 5 / 27,379

Just one thing ..

His FB is insanely HUGE .. the number yer figuring is his base FB, he also has a CoI with AG also ... adding whatever % on top of that huge FB .. and if you look he is still getting beat .. sure his FB will grow .. that doesn't mean that there is no way to beat him. There are only a few dd spells that are approaching the 2mil lvl .. what did you expect to see??

Vaynard,

You just notice this NOW?

With the archery nerf, having a large ELB is not money well spent. You can only hit the first minion and only for 2 or 3 rounds.

If you decided to use a large ELB/large MH/BL that is 2 massive NW weapons you need and the BL does not even kick in till the 4th round of combat. Giving the FB mage 3 rounds of attacks before you can start dealing real damage.

BTW,
Cosmos FB is more like 2.4 million since he uses a COI and AG's each of which are at least +10. So add 20% to the level of FB stated in the stats section of the game.

That's true bartjan, he does deal more damage with his ranged weapon than his FF there. Of course, you have the 4th largest AMF, split the damage 3 ways, use a large MgS, have a ToJ with its natural endurance, and have 147AC on your tank. If I didn't know better, I'd say that team was created with the sole purpose of mage killing. I'm glad to see you do reduce his fireball damage that much- it's nice to know not everyone gets trounced completely by this one spell.

Chappy: not sure what I was expecting. Perhaps I was just expecting to see a bit closer of a contest between one of the largest ELB and the largest FB. But it is not just this one FB that is skewed- I imagine we could compare all the largest ELB to all the largest FB and find the exact same thing.

Ranger: I guess I'm a little slow sometimes :S It just never struck me as to how much more powerful FB was than anything else out there.

If bartjan geared his character against mages, then its possible he's less effective against other tanks.

FB can be extremely powerful, but if you live until round 4, that FB starts dealing lethal damage to friendly minions while doing less damage to you. That in itself is a large penalty.

Also keep in mind that the main weapon for tanks are melee weapons, not ranged. Once you get to round 4, a tank with a morg, bloodlust, and VA starts dealing lethal damage, while sucking HP back to the tank.

FB mages have the upper hand in ranged, but tanks have the upper hand in melee. I think its rather balanced.

Couple of points here

1) Your comparing apples with oranges here - you have DB's and Dex. FF's and FB mages in general don't have these. In a straight mage vs tank battle (say Krang vs Cosmos), I would thing Krang would average three hits a round not two. Whack on some Beleg's gloves and all of a sudden they would do about the same damage according to your numbers.

Of course Krang specialises in melee and uses bloodlust instead of archery so from rounds four onwards FB damage pales compared to the damage his Morg dishes out.

Umm Duh...

FB is overpowered verses some strats here, it's all about damage, and if you also focus on doing damage, you'll find FB outclassing you at every turn, if however you have focused on general defense with a more average offence FB simply doesn't cut it.

I've got the second biggest FB in the game (most of the time), and I've been horrified by it's ability to allow someone to focus so mininally on defense that you can train almost 3/4 of your XP into a DD spell and not only fight effectively but also clan fight and get decent rewards. Cosmos may end up #1 MPR, but he'll never beat the RoS/AS/GA teams, the roe sham boe game going on is certainly extreme, but it still has all the pieces.

I think the problem is less that FB is unballanced than that tank weapons are the result of two logarithmic curves, base and x to dam. FB is linear.

FB is linear? Noooo can't be... heard Jon does nothing linear!

:) Could we be getting to the stage I predicted long ago that due to its linear nature, at some point in time DD will out damage weapons, as it would be prohibative to raise their 'X' any firther? ;)

If you want to stop FB, use four minions, AMF and some MgS somewhere...

I read this and thought," Dang, I need to make a FB mage team. They're great at high levels."

Then I realised I _have_ a FB mage team, and I never get a character past 100k power anyway.

:)

:D

FB should account for more than half of your total XP to be this effective, no other DD spell or skill allows that type of specificity...maybe it's time for FB to do splash damage to the caster as well?

You can do it with CoC + a ToE. Just hunt out teams with no / weak ranged attacks. :)

You couldn't fight a CoC single mage with 1/4 3/4 ratio at this level, it just wouldn't cut it, and you certainly couldn't clan fight...I can do more than a million points of damage before round 4, which is the only way I get away with such low HP...

/me kindly opens the door and welcomes back his old friend.

"Hello blah-blah-blah-is-OVERPOWERED-post. Welcome back. I haven't seen you much lately." :P

As for the limited USD argument, that doesn't hold. As long as people stop fighting enough to go to work everyday, there will always be a steady flow of USD being poured into the game.

As for me, I always find myself gravitating to the same conclusion. Leave all spell damage the same. Just make MM fire for 3 rounds of ranged and FB fire for only the last 2.

Sorry, but how can you compare current biggest FB and biggest ELB, and wanted them to have equal damage ? I mean, how do you know that a lvl 2 mil FB should be equal with ELB x118. Not only that ranged/melee weapon determined by str, and it could be that lvl 2 mil FB is probably equal to ELB x150 or something.

"And while this is a lot of damage, it's barely over 300k a round- less than half the amount Cosmos's Supernova deals per round, even after an AMF of .18. Maybe it's just me, but that seems outrageous. One of the top USD spenders in the game with over $375million NW deals my team HALF the damage per round with the 3rd best ELB in game than ONE minion (ignoring the extra couple hundred thousand damage from the FF) with negligible NW and a FB. "

Again, you are saying something that is untrue, that 375 mil nw is not only spent on the ELB, it's spend on armor, etc. Now if it's 375 mil nw ELB, and only doing 'barely over 300 k a round', obviously there's something wrong.

Technically correct Truedevil. Of course the NW is spread across his team. Only a measly $57million of that is on the Elbow. Excluding HP (or its replacement AS), CB2 has only one thing that you can use by itself and still be deadly--- and that is fireball.

And Vestax: true, there will probably always be USD entering the game. But look at it when you get to the top. Say your ELB is at x150+300. And I have no clue what it would be to increase it, so let's just guess 7million per extra x. So to increase your damage one point, you have to spend a continually increasing amount of your own personal money. And all of us, excluding Bill Gates if he is playing, cannot hope to continually throw ever-increasing amounts of cash into a game. Besides, last I heard he was doing charity work with his money. But that fireball? It will do nothing but go up- and linearly. And without spending thousands of USD as well.

Everyone: I just wanted to apologize if it seemed I was attempting to stir a firestorm. My frustration over what I perceive to be the vast over-powerment and domination of one spell has made me, well, frustrated. If my post seemed incindiary or hurtful, that was not my intention and for that I apologize. I find writing out some of my issues to be a handy stress reliever and I enjoy voicing myself online. I hope I did not step on anyone's toes or cause any hurts.

"But that fireball? It will do nothing but go up- and linearly."

Mages have one thing that increases damage, investing in their DD spell.

Tanks have two things to increase damage, STR and a weapon. Damage is basically the product of STR and weapon damage.

If STR increased damage linearly and weapon damage could be increased at a linear rate physical damage would outpace magic damage by a factor of two (doubling str and weapon damage would increase damage by 4x whereas doubling DD spell would only increase magic damage by 2x.)

Jon corrects this by making making STR and weapon damage follow a power curve . So yes, weapons get more and more expensive to upgrade but this is needed to keep physical damage in line with magic damage.

But when you can no longer (reasonably) afford to increase the weapon side of physical damage?

FB is linear and will always give the same return compared to investment.
Weapons on the other hand although cost is an e^x curve so is damage, an extra x will always give an increased return and is also partially powered by STR.
Armor was not considered in this test either, High base armor would severely affect the data gained.

Actually it takes a 4x increase in str to increase your damage by 2.

IE if you have 100k str and do 100k damage, you will need 400k str to do 200k damage.

So the comparisons of increasing str to increasing FB are flawed.

And.... (sorry for the double post)

Armor is more beneficial to reducing physical damage and far less useful to reducing magical damage (except for the TSA and MgS).

The MgS and TSA both reduce magic damage but the TSA is only good for missile rounds and the MgS prevents enchantments. Therefore they both can only be used on very specific minions. The nerf last month of the TSA (that is -10% to spells) further reduced the TSA's use to non-TOA tanks or walls.

So, just look at my tank. It states an AC of 116. But vs magic the AC is really only 76. 40 AC is about 10% more damage I take from magic then I do from physical. A further benefit to mages over tanks.

In fact, with my massive Morg and Axbow, I have to have a wall just to be able to defeat Cosmos, who is almost equal to my MPR. Without it, I die very quickly.

"Actually it takes a 4x increase in str to increase your damage by 2. "

That was the point I was making, I was pointing out that IF damage increased linearly with STR and weapon damage could be increased at a linear rate (i.e. each X cost the same amount to upgrade) then physical damage would outpace magic damage by a factor of 2, that's why doubling STR won't double damage output and each X costs more to upgrade than the previous point.

I understand where this is going, but you also gotta look at the FB's downside...

Yea, it rocks your socks off in ranged, but what happens in melee? It hits its own team, your ranged and/or melee weapons don't.

But combined with DM, you rarely need melee rounds to win.

Of course, combined with DM against a ROS team, you lose some overall damage you would have had without DM. Part of the strategy is surviving those three rounds and killing you opponent before melee rounds. If you can't do that, then your FB starts beating the dung out of friendly minions.

Which is why I switched to MM.

Hehe don't these posts always seem to come up when my internet is down lol.

Anyways all I want to say about this is that yet it is true that FB trumps Elbow, if you use a combination of the two it makes for a wicked character.

ok it just took me about 10 minutes to read all of that.

i will probably be wrong about this but,
in the lower levels of the game, weapons will beat FB.

isn't it because weapons are cheaper to upgrade(in the lower levels)? and you need xp to get up FB and you cant buy xp but you can buy upgrades.

please dont blast me with responses all it takes is 1 person to tell me im wrong.