Top Five: 4 minions only? (in General)

Can a two minion strat make it to the top 5 and stay there?

Lead Minion:
Training AMF and an appropriate amount of VA whilst wearing a corn to boost the enchantments.

Second Minion:
Training BL to 0.75 and the rest on HP while using a large MH and a capped ToA. EBs, EGs and a HoE would be worn.

Combined with daily BA purchasing as well as minimal downtime a large MPR would be achieved quickly from this NCB. This would propel the character through the rank and file very fast and only leave it vulnerable to an elite few.

Simple and effective, or just plain simple?

It might work, although there are a few problems with it. The biggest issue would be bankroll. You would have to obviously have a large amount of disposable income to not only invest in BA every day but also to upgrade the weapon. You would want to either switch the EB to DB, or at least have the Enchanter train a miniscule PL. But with EB I still see any tanks with enough + giving you trouble.

And then there's mages. Oh, the mages. Just because one of your minion's is focusing on AMF doesn't mean you'll probably be able to beat them all. I think they would be the single biggest challenge, with especially FB mages or teams with MM killing your tank in the first few rounds. And with a ToA, you'd be very vulnerable to this.

How about if someone did like my strategy? Single tank most of the NCB, then added a Wall in the back with at least a few weeks to go? Walls are much better mage stoppers, and with PL you're immune to drainage, and since you went single minion a while your tank should be big enough, and especially if you use ToA.

Overall, I like your strategy, but I just can't see it competing among the elite mages / tanks as stated.

Bankroll wouldn't be a huge problem as money would be coming in from prepared savings, rental of my old gear and the odd USD purchase.
Using my lvl 1.75m ToA and renting weps until it was practical to use my MH [84x105] (+100) would help a lot too.
Getting through the rank and file as fast as possible would eliminate a lot of the noise from the mage fraternity.

Prepare for an expenditure of around 25 million on BA to purchase all BA for four months. I started with 22 million, and what I have left (on Hubbell) won;t get me there. More clan fighting at first would have helped some, but BA costs more now since the NCB bonus is higher, too. Just FYI.

i don't think a MH is that important, it receives a damage penalty, so it has a base of about 55, in my opinion if you have VA, get a BoNE or ELS.

you will have minimal AC with that there. even worse with DBs at least with EBs you can get about 40 AC from them.

Flamey: I think you've gotten rather confused about the morg, this damage penalty you're talking about...where did you get that idea?

Mages and real tanks (ones wearing armor) are likely going to pwn you G...

Evasion instead of BL ?

Evasion is awesome vs other tanks (ask pit) but is a huge exp investment and does nothing vs mages, BL will work on both. Your strat will work against other tanks fairly well GB with the PTH added from you ToA and a nice MH, but against mages you won't have the AC or minions to spread the DD damage out. PL on the E might work for you but then you'll have to train HP on him as well (my opinion has always been let the E cast and die) and that will take exp away from AMF.

without multiple minions and without AC, amf isn't really going to save you, ask some of the ToA tanks who have an AMF of a mil how much good it did them. The ToA is still missing the fast kill ability it so sorely needs, 7 rounds is too long to expect a nekkid tank to live out in the wild.

I'm talking single tank here but imo there is little difference between a single minion tank strat and two minion. The first UC tank I did - Artful Dodger - had a massive UC ability - and for a little while I was troubling the top ten with him. But it was the ranged attack that enabled him to compete. I rented the biggest bow in the game to do that.

Without ranged the large FB mages will kill you. At a certain level it doesn't matter how big your AMF is. When the big mage teams are hitting for at least 500k AMF starts to become a little less effective. You wouldn't spread their damage enough with just two minions. However concentrate the tank's strength in ranged and you might just do the job against mages. When I was working Dodger with that big bow I was able to get at least draws against Novice's Gothmog char.

about 10 times...(out of 999999999)

A bit more than that with the big bow!!! I could almost hear you thinking 'wait a minute - I could beat him a minute ago.....' when I equipped it!

Sounds similar the Spydah's original strat (I think he switched from archery to BL). Much has changed since then but I think you will have the same problems, ie a large AMF alone is not enough to counter the big mages and many of the tank teams up there are USD powered. Iluvatar and Elros are probably the best examples of similar strategies currently being played and they do ok.

check shadowsparkle strat. he should be top 5 if he can afford better itmes...also lose that bom with a mgs

In my opinion, the single greatest addition to a single character (be it mage or tank) is the one un-nerfable stat in the whole game (minus a few odd skills), HP. You can protect HP with a variety of armors or methods, you can only lose HP is someone gets through your protections and does damage to you, and when adding a minion a while after creation, the only way to make them competitive at 1/9th the exp is to dump it all into a single stat.

I would switch to a wall tank from an enchanter tank. From there you can customize it in many ways.

I tend to customize based upon what I have already trained, if your single tank has Protection and AMF, then leverage that on the wall. If you have no AMF, then lean the wall towards magic, if you have no decent protection, lean the wall towards AC. That kind of thing. A super dodge wall with a MgS in front and bolster your tank AMF, and you might do real well against both tanks and mages. Crank up your protection and drop some serious NW into your armor.

In the end, it gets decided I think when you decide to add the minion. If you do it early, single stat concentration is not nearly as important. The longer you wait, the more influential that is. So I recommend the wall not only because I think it makes sense from a fighting strat, but also from a timing of the addition of the minion.

I assume you would have a base Protection on the Second minion? You might even want to train it up to about (10). Not much but against the huge mages it might be enough. For the same xp you could add maybe 5k Hp? While The 10% protection will give you far far more. Just a thought, because not ALL mages run DM. Most do, but not all.

looking at a protection graph, you probably don't want a high protection, but a base protection or an effect of (8) would give you the most for your xp, probably any higher you will not want to use it.