Planning ahead; Need recommendations for NCB char. (in General)

Anything that relates to quick-kill strategies would do.

Single FB mage + DM. Job done. Add tattoo of choice. Usually a ToE or a FF/SF. A ToE will help you live longer, a SF will help you kill much quicker. Especially if you have a large tattoo to start with.

Save your cash for a pair of AGs and you're set.

Or, consider a single MM mage with a FF. That way, you'll never get your overall damage reduced if your SF kills off an opponent before your FB 'fires'.

FF + MM Mage I tihnk might become the next cookie cutter. :)

GL got there first. Nothing competes in the quick kill stakes. Low cost, high speed growth, especially if you equip a RoE for the first month or so, and buy BA as much as you can while it's cheap enough.

And the following is an excerpt from a post I made in another thread. But it cannot be repeated enough.

"Oh and as an aside - any team should be equipped with the biggest tattoo you can lay your hands on. Until that max tattoo level overtakes your tattoo you will be getting the most from it that you can get. And max tattoo levels rise faster than tattoos so your power grows much more quickly.

Works for me anyway. And Sefton. And GL. "

I think Sefton was the first person to post on this but it's very important. If you have an oversized tattoo you can still use it. It will work at your max tattoo level and will only add to your pr what a tattoo of that level would anyway. Whatever you do just use the biggest tattoo you can get your hands on!

4 FB : 2 HP : 1 FB with a named ROE.

Really the only way to get to the top with the NCB.

Forgot the RoE! >_< A RoE will give you the largest MPR possible, but if you use a tattoo (and stick with that tattoo) the moment your max level is larger than the tatoos level, you gain more 'power' overall for your character than continuing to use a RoE.

The RoE gives 22% of the xp you earn as bonus xp, a tattoo gains 33%.

another reason to use a familiar tattoo instead of a RoE.

Your max level grows faster than your MPR. Therefore if you're training a mage minion, a Familiar Tattoo (already above your max tattoo level) will grow faster than your character.

Allowing you to fight up, a lot. :)

Using a RoE would be best...you can always buy a large tat.

I'm using a MM +FF single minion...it is working well.

My NCB character Shimmer is doing pretty well, just a simple FB mage with a named ToE that is almost double my Max Tattoo is size ;) The only real trick is settling on a good FB to HP ratio.

Personally I would use a RoE until my max tattoo level was the same size as the tattoo I had lined up. I don't think the ToE will allow you to hit up enough to better the extra xp granted by the RoE.

GL wrote
"another reason to use a familiar tattoo instead of a RoE.

Your max level grows faster than your MPR. Therefore if you're training a mage minion, a Familiar Tattoo (already above your max tattoo level) will grow faster than your character.

Allowing you to fight up, a lot. :)"

Please explain, I don't understand.

BL. Say you train your guy to MPR 100. Your Max tattoo will be higher let's say 150. (All guestimates!). At 150, the DD familiar tattoo (who puts 100% of it's xp itno it's DD spell, will have a larger DD spell than your single Mage could possibly hope for.

Therefore larger than any of your opponents (at your level) could train, or even larger than any AMF you would face.

Allowing you to fight up more than if you just had your own DD at MPR 100.
I hope this helps explain! :)

All the testing I did showed that a named RoE gave less experience than the up fighting a maxed out ToE (by maxed out I mean one above the Max tattoo level) would allow.

What about strategies where a Familiar is used as the main form of damage?

Just turn the single minion wearing it into some kind of High HP/PL EO Enchanter. :)

But if your Familiar is your main damage dealer, you might just as well use four minions, as you're not diluting any xp from your main source of damage.

Actually, if you're using a familiar as your primary damage dealing minion, you HAVE to have four minions. Your scenario of a single mage training 100% FB (for example) having a smaller fireball at any MPR than the max tattoo of a FF is not true. With the tattoo nerf, this doesn't occur until you start adding minions to reduce the total XP applied to any stat at any given MPR level.

For instance, at an MPR of X with 1 minion training 100% into one stat, that stat can be maxed out to Y. However, with 4 minions each training 1 stat to max, each of them can be maxed out to only 1/4 Y. Tattoos are never reduced in such a fashion, and thus are most effective when you have 4 minions ("effective" meaning tattoo level compared to an equivalent stat trained on a minion at the same MPR). Add in AG's, and it's even more clear, as you can't put AG's on a familiar. It is for this reason that when I restart again, I'm using FB+ToE all the way. Once the max tattoo growth curve takes effect, I will have a FB trained higher than my max tattoo. AG's will broaden that gap further.



It is for this reason that I think this game is not "mage blender" or "tank blender", but instead "tattoo blender". Effective strategies must revolve around which tattoo and how to best support the tattoo.

Or is the game a combination of everything, making it "Carnage Blender"?

NS, at any level (maybe apart from the lower hundreds...) your max tattoo level is higher than your MPR. So even if you were to train a single Mage with 100% xp into DD (and omnly 20 HP!) your DD familiar would have both a higher DD spell (as max tattoo is higher than your MPR...) and more HPs...

If you want to be a Single ToE mage, then do FB. Once you start adding minions, switch to CoC so you don't kill yourself in fights.
For starters,
Train HP and FB (add a base Pro or not I did it cause Tanks don't usually train DM) and forget about DM. With the amount of RoS users out there, you'd need an ungodly DM to reduce their Enchantments (the ToE will help you better there in reducing AMF and GA damage than a big DM will) Not to mention that if you go heavy DM, you run the risk of running into Decay users. So when they become a problem you'd have to reconfigure your strat. I have no DM but if Decay becomes a problem I can train up some AMF and put an end to that in under a day and not have to change my whole strat costing me time and money.
Sefton had a valid point about ToE vs a named RoE. They go back and forth. Sometimes it's better to use the ToE and others the RoE. Just watch your avg exp when you are using the ToE and if it starts to get low, switch to the RoE (you might have to re-arrange your fight list a bit, but maximizing that xp is more important at this point in your characters development).
Get some DB's the bigger the better. Be a Tank killer, it'll help you grow fast. Make it to where they can't hit you, but you can blast them every round until you kill them.
Start with 10 mil cb2 if you can. The first week or so you'll lose money then depending on your activity levels, you'll start getting it back around 120k mpr, but later on, you'll reach a point where you'll start losing money buying ba again, but that shouldn't happen until around 800k mpr or higher).
Once your MTL reaches a level to where you can start leveling up your tattoo, I would advise you to do so.

or a UC char like mine or johnnwas's

4 minion CoC / RoS or
3 minion WW CoC/ToE

UC isn't exactly a quick kill strat.